


Lovely

by Wingfield



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Humor, Let Mando Say Fuck, Multi, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn, Swearing, Violence, idiots to lovers, post-Season 1, secret royalty
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-06
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:06:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 28,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22145368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wingfield/pseuds/Wingfield
Summary: The Mandalorian slapped a pair of cold cuffs around her wrists.She blinked up at him. "You could buy me a drink first-""Do you know there's a bounty on your head?" He said.Mando is in a dire situation: The child is injured, he's broke as shit, and Moff Gideon has a stranglehold on the Guild. 'Lovely' is the ex-imperial medic with a secret identity working in a dirty cantina that he hires to act as the face of his bounty hunting business and part-time babysitter. Their partnership has a rocky start when he tries to wrestle her into carbonite.Disaster bisexual Original Female Character.
Relationships: Baby Yoda & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV), Baby Yoda (The Mandalorian TV) & Original Character(s), Background Cara Dune/Omera (Star Wars), The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 34
Kudos: 109





	1. The Medic

The Mandalorian pushed the pain in his leg to the back of his mind as he limped down the bustling street towards the hospital on the corner. He had to move fast. This was a matter of great urgency, but not for him. There was something even more serious to him than the injuries to his own body.

He made it to the corner opposite from the wide bright entrance, but what he saw waiting there sank his heart. Five imperial guards in armoured uniforms stood in his way, accompanied by a hunter he recognised from the guild.

They were expecting him. Moff Gideon worked fast.

If he had the full use of both legs maybe he could have taken them. He wasn't beyond holding up a hospital, demanding the supplies he so desperately needed and booking it before his enemy could be summoned. But as it was, he wouldn't stand a chance, and he had it all to lose.

Realising how conspicuous he appeared, standing still in a crowd, he looked for refuge. A door swung open behind him as a man stepped out of a dingy little cantina, and Mando slipped inside.

The bar was empty except for one booty where a dozen men sat, filling the room with their drunken voices. None of them had noticed Mando's entrance. The waitress serving the table had her back to the door.

The men appeared to Mando to be the ex-soldier type that he'd had all too much experience with. They were loud, obnoxious, rich from their looted treasures, and entitled to every space they entered. They shouted orders to the waitress.

"Get me another flagon of Jawa Juice before I sober up, hey beautiful?"

The young woman replied quickly in a sunny voice, "Certainly Sir, I'm always up for a challenge."

The men roared with delight at the playfulness in her tone, but something about it felt wrong to Mando.

The man ordering reached out, caught her around her waist and pulled her against his side. She fumbled with the wobbling stack of glasses on her tray. The man took further advantage of her distraction, his hand wandering over the curve of her hip-

Anger flared up in Mando. _Protect the innocent. Defend the weak. This is The Way._

He started edging towards the party.

"Hey lovely," said another man, "What's your name, beautiful?"

"And why would you need to know that, Sir?" She shot back, surprisingly steady. "Have you got plans for me?"

If Mando didn't know better, he'd think she was genuinely flirting with them. The ex-soldiers obviously didn't know better.

"Maybe I'll just call you Lovely," said the man with his hand hooked around her thigh, steadily hiking up her skirts.

"And why would that be, Sir?"

Mando saw her lean away from his touch, but he was gripping her tight.

"Because that's what you are." His friends burst into raucous laughter, and the girl along with them.

Mando was just a few feet from them when a they started to notice his presence. The laughter died, and one-by-one, they turned towards him, their faces hostile. The biggest, the one groping the waitress, was the last to see him. He finally realised that the attention had shifted.

"What's your problem?" He spat.

The woman turned as well.

She had such an unexpectedly elegant face that Mando was taken aback for a moment. Geometric stripes of paint in blue and vibrant orange stretched across her cheeks.

"Show some respect," Mando said. He kept his eyes on the girl, waiting for a signal, but her mask of politeness remained intact.

The other men around the table began to rise, looking to the big man as their leader for direction. The leader seemed content to stare Mando down.

"She doesn't mind," He said, all insufferable smugness.

"Why don't you ask her?"

He pulled her even closer. "You don't mind, do you Lovely?-"

"She has a name." Mando's hand drifted to the blaster in the holster at his hip.

The mood changed. The ex-soldiers froze, all but their eyes, which darted around over their lazily discarded blasters on the tabletop.

The big man seemed to sense the vulnerability of his position, and gave in to Mando's agenda.

He loosened his grip and asked sulkily, "What's your name, Lovely?"

The waitress looked wearily over the weapons, and incredibly, cracked that same blinding smile again. Clapping the man on his shoulder she said, "It's whatever you want it to be."

With the air of regaining control of the situation, she separated herself from the table and loaded the last of the glasses on her tray. Mando noticed a fine chain about her neck, which looked to have a heavy pendant tucked away, hidden below the wrap of her shirt.

"Thank-you Sir, but there really isn't a problem here," She said to Mando. "Grab yourself a seat at the bar and I'll be right over." She gestured to the furthest barstool with such nonchalant confidence that Mando felt he had no option but to take it.

He limped across the room and sat along the dusty counter, keeping an eye on the muttering group as the waitress disappeared into the back. He heard the muted rumble of voices and glasses knocking about from down the hall she went.

Mando spared a glance through the front window at the hospital, but the guard situation had remained much the same.

He heard the kitchen doors open down the hall again, and from out of it he caught a familiar voice, only slightly different...

"-Not fucking joking, they were almost going to have a gunfight out there. Why do I have to rely on other patrons for backup? That should be your job!"

It was the waitress on her way back, but she had dropped all pretence of politeness in her voice where she thought he couldn't hear or see her.

"This flagon better be watered down like I asked," She said.

A gravelly voice replied to her in the affirmative, and he heard footsteps coming his way-

Then they stopped suddenly. Curious, Mando leant out from the bar to peer down the hallway.

He caught sight of the waitress, holding a full flagon, stopped just before the cantina floor. Her eyes landed on the Mandalorian and softened. A silent thank-you.

A look of unbridled mischievousness overcame her. She turned her concentration onto the flagon, and spat straight into it. She looked to Mando again, winking as she swirled the jug.

As she stepped back into the cantina, she took up her service persona again like it had never happened. Mando watched her serve the group flawlessly, and noted that this 'Lovely' would not be someone wise to cross.

~

While she wiped down tables the Mandalorian sat alone at the bar, ordering nothing. Though 'Lovely' was far from bothered by it while the retired imperials still lingered.

Lovely was as good a name as any. Tomorrow it would be something different. She'd get another name or two: 'Beautiful', 'Baby', 'Woman', 'Hey You' or even 'Bitch', and she'd be happy to be them.

It truly wasn't a lie, she was happy with whatever name she was given. Anything was better than her own...

"Girl!"

That was another one of her collected names.

She hurried back to the kitchens where her employer summoned her from. He came crashing through the doors just ahead of her. He was angry: foaming at the mouth and clenched claws.

"I saw what you did, and now your last chance is gone," he growled.

The sabotaged flagon. He had seen her revenge.

"They'll never know-"

"Someday, someone will, and you'll be sorry. It just won't be in MY establishment-"

She was being fired from another job.

"Please, I-"

"No" He said simply, and opened the side exit door behind her.

She tried to plead with him, but he'd made up his mind. He took her arm and shoved her outside with his extraordinary strength. She tripped on the gutter in the alleyway and stumbled into a puddle of foul-smelling liquid. Probably urine.

Regaining her balance as gracefully as she could on an overflowing dumpster, she turned to face him with her full fury, but the door slammed in her face.

"What about today's wages?" She shouted, but no answer came.

"Fuck."

She truly was fucked this time. She was on her last thread of sympathy with her landlord.

Hit with the severity of her situation, she sank into a seat on the filthy gutter, her head falling onto she knees. This would put her on the streets.

The door opened again, and she looked up hopefully.

But it was only the Mandalorian from the cantina. He looked down at her briefly, but didn't say a word.

What was he doing?

If she was still an employee, she would have asked him why he was using the staff door, but she didn't care anymore.

He limped past her and sat on the gutter too, but a few paces down towards the main road. He lowered himself gingerly, favouring his stiff left leg. Looking closer, she saw stained bandages wrapped about his knee.

A few minutes passed in silence. The Mandalorian was contently ignoring her, leaning out towards the alleyway entrance intermittently. He was watching something. Waiting.

She could never stand a mystery.

"Who goes into a Cantina," she asked abruptly, "If they can't eat or drink anything?"

The Mandalorian turned to consider her. The ex-waitress felt a little unhinged by his expressionless visor.

"I didn't mean to," He said eventually. His voice was pleasant, low and steady.

"Ah, that explains it."

Maybe she shouldn't be using her damn sarcasm on an armed stranger, but her life was falling apart, what other occasion would she have to be so bold?

"Who are you?" She said.

"Call me Mando."

"I know you're a Mandalorian." Now he was starting to annoy her. "I meant, what are you doing here?"

This question he chose to ignore. He peeked out round the corner again, and this time the girl jumped up to follow his line of sight.

He was watching the hospital. It was crawling with new guards that hadn't been there this morning.

"Don't stare, you'll attract trouble!" The Mandalorian growled at her.

She rolled her eyes and sat down on the gutter, though closer to him this time.

It was obvious now. He needed medical supplies, but he was on the run from this new law enforcement. Was he a petty criminal? A fugitive?

She wasn't one to judge though. She looked closer at the injury to his knee. The blood of the bandage was well browned. She wondered if it had been changed recently.

"What is with this laceration? Shouldn't you get that checked?"

He fell back on silence, so she pressed him further. "It's going to start festering if you don't clean it, you need some saline fluid to flush it-"

"You know a bit about medicine?"

"A bit" she chuckled. It was a little funny, considering her history.

This had Mando's interest.

"I've got a job for you. Take these credits and buy this list of supplies from the hospital." He handed her a small pile of credits and a scrap of parchment with a list written in a messy scrawl. "I'll pay you double what's here when you get them to me, so don't think about running."

She considered his proposition, weighing the danger of dealing with a criminal against the meagre share of money on offer.

"You're on the run, aren't you? That's why you keep eyeing those guards?"

"Yes"

"Double this still isn't a lot of credits."

The Mandalorian stared her down. "I was under the impression you were desperate." He reached for his money back, "And that's all I have."

She closed her fist so he couldn't take them back. It was an empty drive at bargaining anyway. She WAS desperate, and this at least would keep the landlord off her back for a few days.

And there were of course always other ways to squeeze more credits out of this...

"Fine, Mandalorian. I'll do it."

He seemed satisfied with this. "Just don't attract any attention to yourself, meet me in the shipyard, bay fifty-nine"

They rose together, and she made to set off first, but he halted her with a quiet voice:

"Before you go, what's your name?"

A hundred names flashed through her mind. Which one? Dare she say her real name?

This 'Mando' hadn't given her his real name either.

"Call me Lovely"

~

Using the waitress wasn't his ideal plan, but he thought she was desperate enough to be trustworthy and seemed capable enough.

Now Mando knew for sure that he'd made a mistake.

He was frozen dead in his tracks by the entrance to the shipyard where the bulletin was, watching several new open bounty posters go up. The biggest was his own. His own Beskar helmet stared back at him over the name 'Din Djaren', and a reward promised worth twice his armour.

But that wasn't the surprise to him. In the corner, a droid placed the smaller poster of two, unnamed young women. The first had a kind face with common features, though square-jawed and a smudge of dirt on one cheek. The second was Lovely, the waitress from the Cantina.

Fuck.

He had no choice but to wait on her delivery though, so he pulled on the hood of his new cloak to make himself less recognisable, and sought the sanctuary of the Razorcrest.

He paced around the hold, despite his leg, going over everything in his mind. How long could he wait for her? This place was crawling with Bounty hunters looking for him, she could be caught quite easily. Had she been caught already?

He decided to wait for just five minutes more.

He wondered at who would place a bounty on her. She could be in hiding, she'd refused to give her name, after all? Was is because she'd recognised him as a bounty hunter?

In the photo she had been younger, and instead of face paint, her cheeks were censored by a black box edited over the picture. Mando wondered what markings she must be hiding under there, for the person setting her Bounty to be hiding them too-

A knocking at the door interrupted his thoughts.

"Mandalorian! Are you in there? I've got supplies!"

It was her.

Mando opened the ramp to her and she bounced up to meet him, carrying a crate bearing the hospital insignia.

She had on a blinding smile again, but this was different. In the Cantina it had been compulsory politeness, but this was victory.

She dropped the crate at Mando's feet as something in the distance over her shoulder caught his eye-

"Piece of cake," She boasted. "And best of it all, it didn't cost you a thing. More coin in my pocket, and you'll have the peace of mind knowing you've paid me fairly."

So she was a thief.

"You stole this?"

"Yeah." She said, unashamedly, placing one hand on her hip and the other out towards Mando for payment.

Mando watched as the threat he'd spotted moved closer.

"It's good to know I can always fall back onto thievery if this whole Cantina career doesn't take off-"

"You know you're being followed, he said, gesturing toward the approaching bounty hunters.

Lovely turned. "Fuck. I'm sure they didn't see me stealing!"

The Hunters seemed to recognise their quarry's potential to escape, and started for the Razorcrest at a sprint.

Lovely screamed at the sight and scurried aboard. Mando shut the doors again and raced up to the cockpit.

He wrenched the old ship to life as fast as he ever had, and got her in the air. The boosters were sputtering, they were getting low on fuel. There was only a few jumps left in them before he would have to refuel.

Lovely had followed him up the ladder and was at the windows, jumping up and down with nervous energy.

"Take off. Take off! Take off now!"

Mando slammed on the throttle and felt that familiar dip in his guts as the Razorcrest jumped to hyperspace.

~

With the pounding in her chest beginning to slow, Lovely stepped back from the windows where the galaxy sped past, and sunk into the seat to the Mandalorian's left. The other seat was occupied by a mysterious metal sphere.

What had she gotten herself into? She was all alone in hyperspace with a strange man. Maybe she did have a death wish. Would he be mad that she was caught stealing?

Finally, after what felt like an eternity of silence, the Mandalorian set his ship to cruise, and spun in his chair to face her.

His impressive stillness was unreadable.

"Sorry for the trouble," Lovely said. "I've never been caught stealing before, I've gotten pretty good at it. I didn't know that would happen."

Still nothing. It would have been better if he'd just shouted at her.

"But it worked out okay, didn't it?" She continued.

After another long awkward moment, he began silently digging through his money bag, and offered her a bundle of credits.

Lovely took them gratefully. She turned them over in her hands. It was exactly what they'd agreed on, double what she still had in her pocket.

A pair of cold cuffs slapped around her wrists.

Lovely blinked up as the Mandalorian. "What the-"

She tested her strength against them, but she was well and truly bound.

She made to stand. Like at the bar, flirtation was her armour. "You could buy me a drink first-"

The Mandalorian placed a hand on her shoulder and pushed her back down to her seat. "Do you know you've a Bounty on your head?" His exasperation was starting to show.

"No way."

It was impossible.

"Capture only, for a good price too."

"She wouldn't-"

"Whoever she is, she has. I saw the posters going up in the shipyard. That's why you were followed."

Lovely's mind was racing through the possibilities.

"She must be desperate if she's allowing my photo to be splashed around everywhere-"

"So you know who set your Bounty?"

Lovely picked at the cuffs while she looked around the strange ship. It dawned on her that she'd jumped into the metaphorical sarlacc's mouth.

"You're a bounty hunter, aren't you?"

~

Mando soon realised that Lovely sure knew how to talk without really saying anything of importance.

She babbled on, talking to the back of his head, filling the silence for a full half hour. Mando wasn't really listening, it was all crap and stalling for time, he knew.

It hadn't skipped his notice that she'd pointedly ignored his question about the known person who'd set her bounty. He would have to get the answer out of her eventually. He very well couldn't return her to the guild with a bounty on his own head, but maybe he could take her direct to the client.

He was drawn out of his thoughts by a sudden silence. He turned to her in confusion.

She stared back with stony confidence. "I need to use the fresher." She said quickly.

Here we go.

Mando nodded in acknowledgement, and Lovely got up and scrambled down the stairs, no doubt to poke around for clues to an escape like so many captives before her.

He'd really been hoping to get that answer out of her before it would come to carbonite freezing, but at least he'd get some peace and quiet.

Listening carefully to the sounds of his belongings being shifted downstairs, he reached over to the right chair and opened the child's pram.

Like every time, without fail, his heart softened at the sight of the child inside.

He was still asleep. Mando stroked his ear gently as the little creature's chest rose and fell.

He'd been unconscious for a week now, many times longer than ever before. Mando could understand why.

He had discovered the swampy home planet of the child, but what he found there were only ruins and an ambush. The effort the little thing had exerted to help them escape Moff Gideon and the terrifying Darksaber had been incredible.

There was no family to return the foundling to, after all, Mando was all he had left in the world. He was responsible for the wellbeing of the child, and already he was failing. But maybe, with these new medical supplies, he could be revived...

Mando's thoughts were interrupted by a crash from downstairs. It was time for him to take care of his latest aspiring escapee.

"They never learn" Mando sighed to the child, before closing the pram again.

~

Lovely thought the Mandalorian's ship was an old piece of junk, though well organised. Nearly every crate and cupboard had a shiny new lock on it. He was too smart.

There were no weapons to be found: only the medical scalpel she'd brought in with the hospital supplies, and that would do shit-all against the Mandalorian's Beskar.

She took off one of her boots and tested the sturdiness of the heel but it was a little too short, and the edges were quiet well-worn.

She picked up a smaller ammunition box and practiced swinging it from the handle. It was moderately heavy and could do a little damage, perhaps. If only she could get out of these cuffs, she could get a good swing going...

A dark corner caught her attention, and she moved closer to investigate. A rack of carbonite trays lined the wall, empty and waiting.

The box slipped from her hands, dropped and cracked open. Dozens of rounds rolled across the floor.

She backed up slowly, her heart sinking, when she bumped against something solid.

"Now I'll have to clean that up."

Lovely screamed as the Mandalorian grasped her by her upper arms and pushed her towards the Carbonite chamber.

"No, please, I won’t try to escape again!" she begged.

The Mandalorian was relentless, and strong, and he had no more words for her it seemed.

"Please stop, I can clean this up for you!"

She was face to face with the waiting chamber, but she wasn't going to go down easily.

She suddenly lifted her feet up and the Mandalorian almost fell on top of her.

Though he wasn't fooled for long. He lifted her bodily off the ground, and continued on his way.

Lovely, screaming murder, thrashed her legs out and kicked against the wall of the chamber, sending them both to the floor.

There was a mad scramble. Lovely, having landed on top of him had the higher ground and took the opportunity to punch the Mandalorian full in the helmet, her bound hands fisted together-

"Ow!"

That had been a mistake. The Beskar rung momentarily, but any minor damage it did to him wasn't worth the splitting pain from her knuckles.

"I'm Sorry, I'm Sorry!"

Lovely took the chance to run as he shook off the ringing, but he was fast, and soon rising behind her.

Sensing her impending doom, she raced to the opposite side of the hull and climbed a crate to gain a secure hold on a ceiling pipe.

The Mandalorian was soon after her. She kicked out at him again, but he was learning her tactics.

He caught a hold of her heeled boot in no time, and began to pull her down.

"Please no, I'll do anything. I can't go back."

Lovely kicked wildly with her remaining leg, clinging to the ceiling. "I'll be your assistant, free of charge. I'll clean your ship and serve you Jawa juice, I can strip down and if you want, I'll even suck your-"

Her boot connected with the hospital crate and it fell from its perch and deposited its contents among the ammunition rounds on the floor.

The Mandalorian gave one final herculean effort and wrenched Lovely off of the ceiling, and threw her over his shoulder. The dislodged pipe was still clutched uselessly in her hands.

He marched her across the hold. She struggled feebly, striking the pipe uselessly against his armoured back-

This was it, the end.

But then he stopped in his tracks. Lovely dared not to move either, her heart beating out of her throat.

"What did you get?" the Mandalorian said quietly.

He was looking at the medical supplies strewn across the floor

Lovely's voice was hoarse from all the screaming. "What you actually needed." She rolled her eyes, despite herself. "You're welcome."

"Where's the Jelly I told you to get?" he said, deathly quiet.

To Lovely's relief, he dropped her to the floor and started rifling frantically through the mess of bandages and medicines.

Lovely crawled away and sat herself against the furthest wall to catch her breath.

"You didn't get what was on my list," said the Mandalorian, turning to her at last. Anger was seeping into his voice.

"Your list was wrong," Lovely explained breathlessly. "I knew what you actually needed for that leg injury."

Something snapped in the Mandalorian and he surged forward and picked her up again.

Lovely was too exhausted to fight back, so she pleaded, voice breaking. "Please, I used to be a medic. I can heal you with those supplies!"

The Mandalorian stopped again. Lovely held still, terrified.

He placed her on her feet.

"You're a trained medic?" His voice has calm again, thoughtful.

"Yes," Lovely replied. She could almost cry with relief.

He hesitated, thinking for a moment, then decided to take up the offer.

"Okay. Show me what you can do."

He steered Lovely towards the strewn supplies, and sat himself down on a nearby stack of crates. 

Lovely felt like she'd been punched in the guts. How had her fate changed so quickly?

She wiped her watery eyes with the back of her hands, now was not the time for over-thinking. She had to prove herself.

She tried to master her shaking hands as she gathered up her stolen supplies and dropped to her knees before the armoured man.

She hesitated, looking at the cuffs on her wrists still.

"I'm not taking them off." He said, guessing her thoughts.

Lovely nodded. It seemed there was only so much leeway she was going to get.

Despite her cuffs, she made quick work of the old bandage, unwrapping it to reveal a horrific, singed wound. It was quite old and deep, just as she had suspected.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath to steady herself.

When she opened them, the Mandalorian was offering a small object out to her. She took it from him carefully.

It was a cauterising lighter. 

She had to suppress a laugh. Damn, he really was one of those macho, hopeless warrior-types that she'd had so much experience patching up.

The familiarity of the situation led her back to her confidence. She tossed the lighter over her shoulder with a scoff.

The Mandalorian objected. "Hey! You're not going to cauterize it?"

"Best not to," Lovely said smartly, as she set to work.

She tore out the material of his clothes around the wound to give her a bigger area to work on, then began to flush it clean. He tried to suppress a hiss of pain.

Lovely thought it best to keep him distracted with talking.

"It's quite deep and heavily burned," she explained. "I need to shave off all this burnt flesh and all the layers of skin needs to be pulled together."

"You can't just cauterise it?" He still didn't sound convinced.

"No. This needs to be sutured and rested so it can healed up organically. I'll use a gel bandage to promote faster healing, but it will need to be changed more frequently"

"The emergency lighter always worked for me"

Lovely rolled her eyes again at this. "If you cauterize it, it will create a void underneath that can't drain and would be sure to get infected. Then, even if you miraculously beat that, it will never heal properly."

"But-"

"Do you want to limp around forever?"

He stared back at her. She could see frustration in his posture, but he didn't argue back.

"Don't cauterize it," She reiterated.

A few moments passed in silence as Lovely sterilised her scalpel.

"What about a Bacta infusion?" He said suddenly.

Lovely had to laugh at that too. "Ha. As if you could afford Bacta."

"Wasn’t really a question of affording, in the end though. You stole everything, remember?"

Lovely narrowed her eyes at him. He did have a point, but he was still well off the mark. "This wound is too old now, anyway," she said, trying for patience. Bedside manner was never her strong suit. "Only a whole Bacta tank submersion would help you at this point, and I couldn't exactly carry one of those out on my back."

The Mandalorian nodded meekly, finally accepting her expertise. 

A few moments passed in tense silence as she prepared her needles and pulled on a pair of sterile gloves.

"I'm going to go in with the scalpel and the stitches now, she said eventually, and held out an anaesthetic vaporiser. "Suck on this, for the pain."

"I can't," He said slowly, and tapped on his helmet as a reminder.

Lovely sighed. "Take your helmet off," she said casually, "I won't look."

The Mandalorian stared her down silently. Lovely could feel his frustration returning, so she nodded hurriedly.

"Ok, but this is a warning, try to master yourself. I won't be happy if you punch me in the face."

He looked at her pointedly.

Lovely's swollen knuckles pulsed in reminder, and she blushed. "That was different," she mumbled, "…self-defence."

The Mandalorian grunted.

So she set to work. It wasn't her neatest effort ever, on account of her bound wrists, but it was good enough.

The Mandalorian proved himself to be a great master of machoism. Lovely was a little impressed.

Finally, when the last whiff of burnt flesh had dissipated, and the final stitch was being tied off, he spoke again.

"How does a medic end up serving assholes in a dirty cantina?"

Ah, her past. There was plenty in there too painful to look at, but she was well-versed now in dodging around it.

She began wrapping the gel bandage as she considered how to answer.

"I was a healer in the war."

"Was?"

"I trained as a medic, served a couple years, then the war ended. There isn't much work for us in peacetime."

A tense silence fell over them again as Lovely finished up, stripping her blood-stained gloves off and packing the leftover supplies back into the crate.

Mando peered into it as she packed. "You still should have got the stuff on my list."

Lovely brought the infernal list out of her pocket again, and read down it.

"Gamma bean Jelly. Jelly can only circulate the nervous system if you're unconscious, surely you know that? It's actually because the neurons of a conscious brain would detect it as a threat. And two units wouldn't have been enough for you anyway, it's all about getting the right body-to-weight ratio- Ah!"

The Mandalorian had grabbed her by the arm again. Lovely struggled momentarily until she realised he wasn’t leading her towards the carbonite chamber this time, but back up to the cockpit. There, he shoved her back into her chair and moved to the metal sphere.

"I don't under-"

He stepped back from the opening sphere, to reveal inside the most precious little creature Lovely had ever laid eyes upon, passed out cold.

Realisation, and then guilt, flooded through Lovely.

"Oh... Fuck"

~

Lovely had proven herself to be a such a highly capable and knowledgeable medic, so he gave into her insistence to examine the child.

She had been bent over his little unconscious form in the cradle, monitoring his unusually slow pulse for almost an hour, and was yet to make a diagnosis.

Mando was back in his seat, trying to ignore the renewed throbbing in his leg, keeping a close eye on her.

"I don't get it," she finally said. "I can't detect a single thing that's wrong with him."

Mando didn't know what to think about that. It was great that there wasn't anything obviously wrong with the child, but why was he still unconscious then?

"Maybe if you tell me what happened to him…" The medic probed.

"It's complicated."

"I just want to help."

Mando took a breath and looked down at his gloved hands. "We were in a tight situation. He has these abilities. He can do things beyond his own strength. He lifted several dozen troopers of the ground at once and…"

Mando vividly remembers the sound of many necks snapping at once, dull thuds as lifeless bodies fell back to earth-

"He uses the force, like a Jedi?"

Mando almost broke his own neck at the speed he snapped his gaze back to Lovely.

"How do you know about the force?"

She seemed taken aback by his abrupt response.

"I heard all about the Jedi when I was a kid. It was a bedtime story. My trainer was originally a witchdoctor from Moldour. She believed in the force, for real. I didn't believe her at the time, I thought she was crazy… "

"And?"

"And then the war ended, and I heard the accounts first-hand. The Jedi are real, and they're returning… apparently."

"Returning to where, exactly?"

"No idea."

Mando's mind was racing. If there were Jedi out there, Mando had to find them for the child.

_This is the way._

"-is a force injury, that's why I can't detect anything," Lovey was saying excitedly. "The Jelly wouldn't have helped anyway, because the injury isn't in his nervous system."

She jumped up out of her seat, and shook Mando by his shoulder. "Wait, I know!"

"What?"

"There's a brew the witchdoctor always used to make, she said it was energy restoring, force-balancing… and good for digestion."

"Yeah?"

"I mean, I always thought it was pseudoscience, but maybe that's what he needs."

A spark of hope rose in Mando. "How do you make it?"

Lovely had started pacing, muttering to herself. "…Gimer bush, Salt, fermented water weed, dried tea, pollinated stamens…"

Mando jumped from his seat too as Lovely rounded on him, and he found himself caught in front of her blazing, confident smile.

"We're going to have to go to a green planet to get all of it. If you want it done quickly, someplace with a market to get all the ingredients pre-prepared."

"I'll set the coordinates."

~

Lovely was more than just glad that she didn't even have to lie or resort to anything particularly degrading to keep herself useful to the Mandalorian: she felt a responsibility to the poor little green child. She was going to heal him, she had to.

The sun was beginning to sink on the bog planet as they arrived at the market. The Mandalorian was proving to be an otherwise boring travel companion. He didn't talk much, except in one-word answers, and Lovely therefore found herself rambling to fill the silence.

When they reached the centre of the markets, they didn't have much time left, so they would have to split up. Lovely tore in half the list of ingredients and gave the easier ones to the Mandalorian to find.

She also offered him her bound wrists.

"Can the cuffs come off now?"

"So you can run away?"

"I won't-"

"They stay on."

Lovely huffed angrily. She imagined how embarrassing it was going to be getting around the market with them on.

"Meet back here by the bulletin when you're done," He said, "And wear your hood."

He'd loaned her one of his hooded cloaks to help disguise herself from any opportunistic bounty hunters. Lovely threw the hood on. "Not to worry, I don’t want to repeat the whole captive experience with another hunter."

Mando nodded, not at all amused, and strode away from her. Lovely shrugged and set off for the apothecary stall.

By the time she made it back to the rendezvous point, it was getting dark.

The center square was empty. The Mandalorian hadn’t made it back yet.

Lovely waited at the edge where she had a great vantage point for a few minutes, but soon grew bored. She wandered over to the town bulletin, and gasped at what she saw posted there. 

There was her own face on the wanted poster the Mandalorian must have seen already, but alongside it was printed the image of a face that still haunted her dreams.

Cerelia.

The pendant on the chain around her neck seemed to grow heavy.

Lovely moved closer, and reached out to touch the printed parchment, wishing she could reach through the years and touch the real woman...

But the paper remained flat and cold, and Lovely's hands empty. She tore Cerelia's photo out of the poster and pocketed it. Tears filled her eyes, and she pulled her hood around to catch them before they fell.

With her regained peripheral vision, she saw something else that caught her eye.

Another wanted poster, this one featuring the face of her companion.

_The Mandalorian._

_Bonus for delivery of the stolen asset._

_Alive OR dead._

The bastard.

What a hypocrite! He'd gotten angry at her for being a target, while he had an even bigger, deadlier bounty on his own head.

Lovely was just getting started on deciding how she would best confront him for his omission of this fact, when a hand clamped over her mouth from behind and the newly shining stars blacked out before her eyes.

~

When Mando made it back to the empty square, he knew immediately that something was wrong. Tea leaves, stamens and smashed fluorescent jars littered the pavement, indicating a struggle.

Mando moved towards the bulletin and sighed. Of the selection of open bounty posters displayed, Lovely's was there. The mystery woman's poster had her photograph torn out.

That could have only been Lovely herself. She'd been here.

Along the row was his own poster. She would have seen that too, no doubt.

Mando looked for clues over the ground and found his way to one in the gutter by the faint light it was emitting. It was a bounty puck.

Mando picked it up and turned it over so it flared to life.

It projected the same image of Lovely from her poster, but there was more there. Her face was uncensored, revealing that hidden under her face paint were small tattooed symbols on each cheek.

But even more interesting was the name and instructions attached:

_Keerani Organa._

_Capture Only, Utmost discretion requested._

_Return directly to client safe-house, coordinates 29.429.93._

_Be advised that of -7 hours Hosnian time, this Bounty has been made OPEN_

Mando wasn't a big follower of politics and royalty, but this was a family name even he recognised. This is why she hadn't given her real name.

But what was an Organa doing in a slum of the outer rim? Was she in hiding? How did she become trained in medicine?

He remembered what she'd let slip: "She must be desperate if she's allowing my photo to be splashed around everywhere."

Who was this mysterious 'She'? A rival? The other woman in the Bounty?

No, that didn't make sense.

But now was not the time for such conspiracies. Mando gathered up the fallen supplies and added them to his own stash.

Could he make this brew without the medic? It suddenly occurred to Mando that he had no idea what to do with it all.

He still needed her.

Back at the Razorcrest, he looked up the coordinates to the safe house and was relieved to find it wasn't far.

He reached over to smooth a hand against the pram.

"Don't worry kid," he whispered. "I'm going to get you your medic."

~

When Lovely returned to consciousness, the world remained dark.

There was a cloth bag over her head, and the Mandalorian's heavy cuffs remained on her wrists.

She could sense movement and vibration. After a while she discerned she must be on a hover-stretcher. She tried to sit up, but someone pushed her back down immediately.

"We're almost there," said a gruff voice.

They came to a stop, and Lovely was tipped out onto a stone floor. The bag was ripped off her head.

It took her a few blind seconds before she could see the room around her. It was a lavish apartment, dimly lit. Five royal guards stood around the perimeter, each in possession of a blaster.

In front of her sat a woman dressed in dark velvet, that she hadn't seen for a long time, and had wished to never see again. White tattoos adorned her bare cheeks, the left the same as Lovely's own, and the other a different symbol. New lines etched her elegant face, betraying the years. A face that still looked so much like her own.

"Hello Mother," Lovely said coldly.

"Keerani."

There wasn't any warmth in her mother's voice either, only blatant relief. She let out a breath that she could have been holding for almost a decade.

Her Mother left her seat and paced slowly forwards.

Keerani imagined how she must appear: a decade older, dishevelled from her ordeal today, in clothes made of humble cloth, her finery all squandered away.

Her mother reached out a hand, but Keerani found that she couldn't bear to take it.

"Don't touch me," she said.

"You won't hug your own mother? After all these years? Kidnapped and held-"

Keerani's belly boiled with sudden rage. "I wasn't kidnapped!"

Her mother laughed humorlessly. "Of course you were. Whatever Cerelia told you, you didn't have to leave with her. You know she was just jealous of our station. She'd never amount to anything but a kitchen hand-"

"She was my only friend!" Keerani placed her hand over where the pendant on the chain hung beneath her shirt, beside her heart.

"She put filthy ideas in your head. She forced you-"

"I ran away of my own accord. It was my idea. I couldn't wait to be free of your vile snake pit-"

Her mother's features twisted with anger. She grasped the front of her daughter's shirt-

A startling bang sounded throughout the room.

The door behind them had burst open. Through it strode the Mandalorian, his cloak torn, his beskar pauldron splattered with blood, and his blaster trained on the older woman.

How had he fought his way in here? Was he really here for her? Had he heard their whole conversation?

At once, five blasters were raised against him in return.

He was unfazed. "Let her go," he demanded to Keerani's Mother.

The woman looked about, considering her perilous situation. The guards wouldn't be able to stop the Mandalorian from firing on her, they could likely only avenge her. She released her daughter reluctantly.

Lovely took a blessed step away, in the direction of the Mandalorian.

The guards began to draw closer. One spoke to Keerani's Mother:

"Lady Organa? Orders?"

Lady Organa held a hand up to still the guards. She looked on curiously, and a spark of recognition dawned on her face. "Ah, so here is Cerelia now," she said.

Tears filled Keerani's eyes again, as they always did these days where Cerelia was concerned.

Her mother seemed not to notice. She continued on, trying to get a rise out of her. "I never pinned her as a particularly pious one, but people surprise you, don't they?"

The Mandalorian took hold of Keerani's cuffs and pulled her to his side. She went willingly.

The Mother smirked. "You two are as inseparable as always-"

"Mother," Keerani bit out. "That's not Cerelia."

Her mother's face clouded with confusion.

The Mandalorian spoke quietly in her ear. "Let's go before backup arrives, I made a mess getting in downstairs. You still have a job to do for me, Keerani"

He made to lead her from the room, but she resisted. "Wait," she asked, considering her mother's face. "I need to have this talk with my mother... Please, or she'll never stop hunting me."

He mulled on her request for a few seconds, before nodding his permission.

Keerani moved back towards her mother, taking a big gulp to steel herself for the hard truth she would have to re-live.

Lady Organa was impatient. "Well, where is Cerelia?"

Keerani tried to speak, but the words wouldn't come.

"She can't be far-"

"She's dead."

Her Mother's haughty expression fell at look of pure anguish she saw in her daughter.

"Oh... Keerani"

She was like a little girl again, falling into her mother's embrace. Her mother held tight as Keerani sobbed into her velvet finery.

"Did you really want to leave?"

"Yes."

Keerani felt her mother's shoulders drop in resignation. "Your father was right after all."

A pang of guilt tore through her at the thought of her father. "Tell him I'm sorry," she whispered.

"It's ok. You can come home now."

Keerani suddenly disentangled herself from her mother. "This hasn't changed my mind."

The Lady Organa tried to grasp her hands. "No one has to know you served-"

Keerani snatched them away. "I'm not ashamed of what I've done. If I have anything to be ashamed of, it's being related to you. I'm never going back to Hosnian Prime."

"Don't be ridiculous. You're coming with me."

"No" Keerani said defiantly. She stepped back into the shadow of the Mandalorian.

"Mandalorian, I'd like to be rescued now, please" she said calmly.

The guards advanced. The Mandalorian tensed up beside her.

The air split with the hail of red blaster beams, and the Mandalorian spun them around at the last second to deflect them off his back. He aimed his own blaster over his shoulder and shot the closest man down.

The unfortunate guard fell at Keerani's feet, and she saw that the bolt had singed straight through his inferior armour.

"Run," said the Mandalorian by her ear, and she didn't need telling twice.

More bolts rained over their heads as they fled the room, and bounced off the walls as they swept down the spiral staircase.

Keerani took the stairs three at time, listening to the wails of her mother above.

The Mandalorian had a hand at her back, and guided her to the right when they hit the bottom.

The ground floor was littered with unconscious guards. How the Mandalorian had made his way in without a sound, Keerani couldn't guess.

They fled as fast as they could along the main hallway, jumping the bodies where they lay, some in sticky pools of blood.

He fired bolts at their pursuers, and didn’t notice when Keerani crashed head headlong into a purple-skinned man the door. She had half a second to look him over: utilitarian armour, a blaster at his hip, and a tracking fob sticking out of his front pocket that was beeping madly in her presence.

This was the bounty hunter that had brought her in.

The Mandalorian was engaged with the pursuing guards, and Keerani was on her own.

The hunter made a close swipe at her. She ducked under his arms, jumped on his back, and hooked her cuffed wrists over his head, and hung her full weight off his neck. He tried to throw her off, but she clung on, squeezing his airway.

For a glorious moment Keerani thought she had the better of him, but he caught hold of her hair and slammed her against the wall between his body.

She was winded. With the last little bit of air in her lungs, she called for the only person who could save her.

"Mandalorian!"

He came running at her warning. The purple-skinned hunter saw and pulled his blaster-

But the Mandalorian shot a grappling hook from his wrist, pulled it clean from his hands, and fired it without hesitation.

The hunter's lifeless body dropped away from her to the floor.

The house was finally silent of blaster fire. Only the sound of Lady Organa's sniffing drifted down from below.

Keerani gazed upwards. She could imagine her mother crumpled over, sobbing over the irrefutable loss of her youngest child, her only daughter. A strange pity overwhelmed her.

The Mandalorian offered his hand to her and stood waiting, silent. He was giving her a choice.

She'd already made it years ago, when she'd vowed to never set foot on Hosnian Prime again. She wasn't about to take it back. She snatched up the beeping tracker from the bounty hunter's pocket, and switched it off.

Just like a decade ago, when she'd taken Cerelia's hand, she placed hers in the palm of the Mandalorian.

~

Mando wiped the blood off his beskar back on the Razorcrest while Keerani Organa stirred a boiling, aromatic pot, heated by the cauterising lighter.

She hadn't said a word since taking his hand. Mando had so many questions racing through his head after all he had overheard, and now she was determined to stay mute.

She took the brew of the heat and solemnly announced that it was done.

Mando lead her up to the pram in the cockpit and held the child while she carefully dribbled it into his mouth with a syringe.

"Thanks for rescuing me," she said finally. "I'm sorry it wasn't easy."

Mando could see colour returning to the child's cheeks.

"Don't worry. I've had a harder time stealing back bounties before."

It had to be a mark of how depressed she was, that she didn't press him to elaborate on that.

"Can I ask you some questions?" He said.

"If you must."

He decided to start small. "Your tattoos, why do you cover them? What do they mean? Your mother had them too."

"Somewhere along my line we married into a house that kept the tradition of these infernal hereditary tattoos. I've had them since I was a child. On the left is the house crest of Organa, see? For my mother. And on the right is an elderflower. My Father's family were traders. He works in justice now."

"So you're an Organa. Are you a Lady too?"

Keerani snorted with amusement. It was good to see the sadness finally melting away.

"Barely," she said. "We're just an offshoot of the Organa house, lucky enough to keep the name through a line of youngest sons. My father took my mother's name when they married, on account of him not having one."

"But you grew up as royalty. You lived in a grand palace on Hosnian Prime."

She became dejected again. "I don't live in a palace anymore… And besides, at the last count, ninety-three people would have to die before my Mother could have the Organa crown."

"Not very good odds."

"You wouldn't think so, by the way she acts." She laughed darkly. "Although, I wouldn't put it past her to murder all the cousins to get there. You've seen the lengths she'll go to for the family."

As she pulled the deactivated tracking fob from her pocket, a torn piece of parchment fell out too and dropped open on the floor between them.

The photo of the mysterious woman from the wanted poster stared up at them.

Mando met Keerani's gaze.

Her wet but unwavering eyes said, _If you must_.

He picked it up. "Cerelia?"

She nodded. When she began, her voice trembled.

"She was the only real person I knew on Hosnian Prime. I was the one who convinced her to leave with me. I took what I could of my inheritance with us. We lived off of it for a few years, but it wore thin... Then the war came. We enrolled to become sharpshooters, but I was rejected on account of my terrible aim. I took a medical apprenticeship instead. Cerelia became one hell of a gunner. I learnt how to patch people up, put them together again."

Mando watched her, his heart swelling with pity for what he knew was coming.

"The day before she went out to the Death Star, she gave me the news that she was being promoted to Captain. The ceremony would have been that night. A friend from the records department saved her captains badge from the smelter for me, it already had her name engraved."

She pulled the chain around her neck out from under her shirt, and clutched the shiny silver Captain's badge that hung on the end.

"I know how to put people back together," she whispered, "but the only piece I still have of her is useless."

Mando didn't know what to say.

He reached over the child, punched in the combination to her handcuffs, and lifted them off her wrists.

~

When the Mandalorian asked where he could drop her off, Keerani had no idea what to tell him.

"Where you found me, I guess."

He nodded, and set the coordinates.

With his back to her, perhaps to give her privacy with her emotions, he asked, "You don't like to be called Keerani. Why?"

Maybe he had seen how she flinched at the name.

"There's just so much pain attached to it. I lived the worst day of my life with that name."

He nodded. There was understanding in the relaxing line of his shoulders.

A long lull in the conversation followed, filled only by the steady hum of the ship.

"Din Djarin," he said suddenly, "Was my name on the worst day of my life."

He finally met her eyes, and she couldn’t help the smile that broke across her face. It was gratitude, it was thanks, it was for the equal sharing of trauma

Somehow, Keerani knew Din Djarin was wearing the same teary smile behind his steel.

"If only we could toss them away," she mused, "And take up new ones."

"We have," Din said.

She cocked her head in confusion.

"You're Lovely, and I'm Mando."

"You're right, Mando, we are," said Lovely.

~

Mando landed the ship back bay fifty-nine, and took the sleeping child in his arms as they disembarked.

They stopped at the entrance to the shipyard, and watched as a pair of Jawas ripped down the wanted posters of Lovely and Cerelia. Mando's remained firmly in its place of prominence.

"Looks like your Mother has given up."

"That would be my Father's doing, Lovely replied glumly.

She turned to him suddenly, like she'd just remembered something. "The child is the asset you stole, right? Here I was thinking he was yours."

"He is now." 

For as long as it took Mando to find the Jedi, at least. He felt a strange twinge of dread in his chest. 

"How did you figure that out?" Mando asked.

"Context clues"

"What?-"

"You've got a code. Who else would pay someone their contract just before freezing them in Carbonite?"

Despite it all, she had a certain brand of intelligence, however hit-and-miss.

She was rapid fire with the questions now. "How exactly were you planning on collecting the bounty on my head when you have an even bigger one on your own?"

Mando could only shrug at that.

"Sorry I've been such a lousy catch. A waste of fuel, really." She lightly touched the child's fuzzy head. "This one can't be cheap to feed."

This was true. As much as he felt for Lovely's situation, he wasn't in a much better position himself. She was right: He had no way of contracting and returning bounties with the guild while he was the most wanted man in the parsec. His ship needed fuel and repairs, and he was now fresh out of credits.

Mando tried to take his mind off it. "What are you going to do now?"

"Try to get my old job back, I guess. If they'll have me. If not, I'm sure there's some other cantina I haven't disgraced myself in yet."

By the tone of her voice, and what he'd seen of her, Mando doubted it.

"Farewell, Mando," She said, reaching for his hand.

"And you, Lovely." He took her hand and shook it.

As he parted from her he swore he could feel her eyes on the back of his head, but by the time he turned she was walking away.

Mando boarded his ship again, placed the child back in his pram, and began to fire it up.

A soft gurgle caught his attention, and he moved eagerly to the pram. The child began to stir for the first time all week.

Mando thought of Lovely with gratitude. She hadn't been a waste of fuel after all. Despite her incessant babbling, and her proclivity for dramatics and bad decisions, she'd really come through.

As the child grasped Mando's gloved thumb, and blinked his delicate eyes open, Mando's mind wandered.

Lovely had heard the Jedi rumours. Maybe he could ask her all the questions he'd never had the chance to ask of Kuiil?

It then occurred to him that his leg injury hadn't given him any trouble in the last hour, despite all he'd done breaking into the safe house…

They actually had the answers to each other's immediate problems. Maybe this didn't have to be farewell.

Mando quickly shut down the engines, scooped up the child again, and raced back to the shipyard entrance where they'd parted ways.

He flitted frantically through the bustling crowd that flowed past, looking for a glimpse of her shiny hair. He called her name.

"Lovely!"

"Mando?"

He looked down to find her sitting in the gutter, looking much the same as when he found her in the alleyway.

"You could work for me," he said.

Her face brightened immediately, but a hit of trepidation followed it.

"But you haven't got any Money. You can't afford me."

"There's a fortune to be made in bounty hunting," he explained. "I catch the targets, you return them to the guild on Navarro, we split the reward."

Mando recognised the return of her mischievous smile.

"Fifty-fifty?" She asked, hopeful.

She had to be joking.

"I was thinking twenty-eighty."

"You'll give me eighty?"

Maybe this was a mistake after all, and he was misjudging his ability to put up with her shit.

"No," he said, doing his best to stay patient. "I get eighty. I'm doing all the work."

She played coy. "You won't be able to work if I don't join you…"

"I can find someone else for the job-"

"No, no! Ok I'll do it."

"Deal"

They shook hands again.

When Mando went to let go, Lovely hung on. "Thirty-Seventy?" She quipped.

Mando gave her his best glare. "I _will_ leave you here-"

"Ok, ok," she said, dropping his hand.

Mando knew he had a difficult task ahead of him to shape her into the face of his bounty hunting business.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One minute you're watching The Mandalorian for Baby Yoda cuteness, next minute you have 15000 words of plot dot-points for 28 chapters of content.
> 
> First time writing Star Wars, and I would love a comment to let me know how I went!
> 
> Some suggestions for soundtrack based on my own terrible taste in music, with some previous scores from the show thrown in.  
> Alexa play:  
> \- 'Money, Money, Money" by ABBA  
> \- 'When the War is Over' by Cold Chisel  
> \- 'Does your Mother Know' by ABBA  
> (Have I just created an ABBA Jukebox musical?)


	2. The Prize

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mando and Lovely's plan to get her initiated into the Guild goes awry.

The first thing Lovely learnt about Bounty Hunters was that not just anyone could walk into the Guild and become one.

There was a process. You had to prove yourself, and it started with meeting the Guild Master. If he liked you, he'd give you your initiation Bounty. Initiation bounties were notoriously difficult, as it was a way to keep the unworthy out. This was the process she was to go through, even though she could barely tell the right end of a blaster from the wrong.

As such, she had been enduring hours of schooling from Mando over the last couple days. He was desperately trying to teach her how to act like an experienced mercenary before her scheduled appointment in the evening. He'd taken her out to Nevarro's barren landscape by the lava flows to shoot cans in a line.

After setting the targets at an easy distance, he moved back to her side, the child observing keenly in his arms.

Lovely drew the blaster fast, like she'd seen Mando do before, fumbled it, and it discharged a bolt at the ground dangerously close to their feet.

"Slow down!" said Mando, catching the blaster and guiding it safely back into her hip holster.

The child hid its face in fright against the Mandalorian's chest plate.

"Draw slow for now, until you get the hang of it," he advised.

"Okay, sorry."

Mando kept a steadying hand under the barrel of the gun as he guided her effortlessly through the correct motion.

"Like that, see?"

"Got it," said Lovely, even though she was certain she wouldn't be able to replicate the manoeuvre on her own.

"Now, keep a straight posture, look down the mid-line of the barrel to aim, one eye closed, and take a shot." His hands darted over her form: Raising an elbow, straightening her back, correcting her stance.

A thrill ran through her. She guessed such things came from having such a deadly weapon in her hands.

When he seemed satisfied, Lovely put the can in her line of sight and shot at it.

Her bolts flew wildly off.

She turned back to the Mandalorian, the blaster loose in her grip, "I think it's broken."

He had to push the point of the weapon away from his face with a flinch. She was turning out to be a real hazard.

Mando shook his head, pried the blaster carefully from her, and took up the same basic stance she'd tried. He made it all look so effortless.

He took aim, and a shower of red bolts kicked up a cloud of smoke upon hitting the target. It dissipated to reveal a smoldering hole on the ground where the cans had once stood.

"I think _I'm_ broken," Lovely said miserably.

Mando switched on the safety and returned the blaster to her. "Don't worry about it for now, tonight's just a meeting."

They spent the rest of the day aboard the Razorcrest, going over their plans.

"Greef Karga is an ambitious man," Mando said. He had an edge of insanity in his voice. They only had a few hours left to prepare. "He likes to get close to anyone that can help him climb the ladder. You want to make sure he likes you."

She was losing focus. She'd heard this exact speech three times now.

She watched as the green child chased a silver ball around the hold. His happy little chirps and waddling gait was abundantly more entertaining than Mando's lecture.

The infant had been sulky and mostly bedridden the past days since awakening. He was still regaining his strength, and the spongy portions that were their only sustenance surely wasn't helping. He needed some real food.

He tripped over Mando's boot. The Mandalorian picked him up absentmindedly.

Lovely had grown to enjoy watching them together. The usually stoic man had so much patience and affection for the little creature-

"Lovely! You're not listening."

Kriff. She'd had quite enough of the Mandalorian’s paranoia.

"I'll be fine,” She said, blasé. “You'll be on the intercom with me the whole time."

"You still have to know how to act-"

"Look, trust me. Men are dumb."

Mando looked just a little offended at that.

Lovely quickly explained herself: "I'll skip into that Cantina and bat my eyelashes at him, and he'll let me into the guild free-of-charge."

"That won't work on Karga. He likes his hunters with a bit of mystery. He likes to be the one to show off."

"Why do you think that? Because he likes you?"

"Yes."

"If he likes you so much, why haven't you just asked him to do business with you on the side?"

It was a genuine concern that had been eating at her for a while now. She didn't want her job to become redundant.

"He can't be trusted," Mando said. "I thought we had a certain level of understanding, but now he's let an open bounty go on my head."

There was a level of resentment in his clipped tone. Whoever Karga was, Mando must have been good friends with him once to be so cut-up by his betrayal.

Lovely felt compelled to cheer him up. "Do you want me to spit in his drink for you?"

He may have cracked a smile, but she'd never be able to tell.

"Okay then," she conceded. "How do I run this scam?"

"Divulge as little about yourself as possible. Act cool."

"Easy."

"Don't rise to any stupid challenges."

"Less easy, but I'll try."

Mando gave her a look that said, _you better._

It was truly remarkable how she was beginning to see his expressions despite his beskar helmet.

Mando shuffled through some dusty crates and pulled a cloth-wrapped bundle from inside one. "I've got you a mask," he said.

Lovely accepted the package and unwrapped it enthusiastically. It was almost a full Mandalorian-style helmet, cast in a dull bronze. She donned it and dashed to look at her reflection in the fresher mirror.

It loaned her a certain freedom to be unencumbered of facial expression. She could nearly understand why Mando was so committed to his way of life.

Mando's reflection appeared behind her. "The more you keep them guessing, the more they'll respect you."

She could see his point, reflecting woefully on her natural tendency to over-share. Perhaps she should learn to shut her mouth and become a reclusive bad-ass like Mando?

Impossible. Especially when he was such an easy target.

"Do I get a cape and a jet-pack too?"

Mando sighed walked away, which was becoming an all too common occurrence between them.

~

Mando began to feel a reluctant certainty in their mission. They'd had days of practice using the intercom and discussing Guild etiquette, and his partner had finally seemed to come around to his understanding of their target.

And, of course, she cut an impressive figure in her new mask and outfit to match. She'd swapped out her deep-pocketed skirt for fitted leather trousers and thrown on a long dark coat pilfered from a local store. One of Mando's small blasters hung from her belt, but it was purely for decoration. She'd tried to convince him on one of his larger, more-impressive looking rifles, but he didn't think it was a good idea.

He was currently on standby in the cockpit of the Razorcrest, bouncing the child on his knee. The familiar sounds of a bustling cantina came over the intercom as Lovely entered.

"Stay calm, don't make any prolonged eye-contact with anyone, find the private booth," Mando reminder her.

 _"Aye Captain,"_ came her hushed response.

The child climbed into the crook of his arm and burrowed in there for a nap. Mando envisioned how he could finally spoil him with a bowl of his favourite broth once he finally had bounty money coming in.

 _"What's your business here?"_ Mando recognised the voice as a Twi'lek barmaid that had hassled him to order drinks on multiple occasions.

_"I'm meeting the Guild Master for initiation."_

_"This way."_

"Go with her," urged Mando.

So far, so good.

 _"Through here,"_ said the barmaid. _"Guild Master Joaquin will join you shortly."_

Mando felt the bubble of hope in his chest burst.

 _"Joaquin?"_ Said Lovely. _"What happened to Greef Karga?"_

A few terrifying seconds of radio-silence lapsed before the barmaid spoke in a whisper. It came though the intercom loud, like she was close to Lovely's ear:

_"A word of advice, don’t speak of Karga too politely to Joaquin. He was the one that initiated the mutiny."_

Mando heard the Twi'lek's retreating footsteps, then Lovely's panicked voice.

_"Mando, we have a problem. I don't think Greef Karga is the Guild Master anymore."_

~

Lovely sat across from the unexpected bounty master Joaquin, a formidable-looking Mon Calamari, sweating through her new clothes with terror.

He hadn't said a word to her yet, only looked her up and down with intense concentration.

Mando had fallen inconsiderately quiet on the intercom. She really could have used his advice at this point.

"No," said Joaquin suddenly.

"What?" Said Lovely, certain she had misheard.

"You're out."

That was the whole meeting?

Lovely felt a stab of relief. This meant she could get out of this dark Cantina with its suspicious patrons and leave this whole terrifying situation behind…

But it also meant she'd failed. She'd been counting on getting this job to keep her off the streets. Mando and the child were counting on her too.

"Why No?"

"You're just the same as all the rest," Joaquin said tiredly.

Mando was suddenly back in her ear. "What are you doing? Get out of there while you can!"

But Lovely wanted answers.

"How do you know?" She asked. "We haven't even had a conversation."

"You're just another anonymous mask, out to make money," the Bounty Master said.

Mando was unrelenting on the intercom, a constant buzz in her ear telling her to leave this alone and get out.

"Isn't that what bounty hunting is for?” Lovely said. “To make money?"

"It used to be more." Joaquin had a far-away, wistful glint in his eyes. "This guild has had enough of fools in masks."

Lovely was glad that he couldn't see the embarrassed flush behind her own bronze mask.

He continued, "No-one is willing to put their arse on the line anymore, not like the good old days. Bounty hunters used to be household names, something to be awed and feared. They had stories."

He gave her a final look that made her feel like a mouldy quarter of portions, and got up to leave.

"Wait!"

He wanted a household name, he wanted a story. She could give it to him.

She stripped off her mask to reveal her bare face to the bounty master, with it losing her ability to hear Mando on the intercom. She felt almost naked with her hereditary tattoos on display.

But her stunt had the desired effect. Joaquin dropped back into his seat, jaw agape.

"You're an Organa!" He spluttered. "A new republic imposter, I knew it!"

"Calm down.” Lovely said, and employed her coolest drawl. “I'm not an Organa anymore, and the New Republic wouldn't even wipe their hands on me. I go by 'Lovely' these days."

"You look familiar. We had an open bounty on you last week, didn't we? I was wondering why the client cancelled on us."

"Because I made them cancel."

He ate up her words.

"Now there's a story! I'm impressed. The guild would be lucky to have a member of your calibre."

Lovely replaced her mask so she could hear Mando again. He had thankfully stopped yelling at her.

_"Ask for an assignment."_

"So, is this where I get my initiation assignment?"

The Bounty master became suddenly apprehensive. "I'm sorry, I must warn you first. As much as I like you with this new development, times are tough. There aren't enough bounties to go around, so entry comes at the highest price."

Was she in or out?

 _"He's not saying no,"_ came Mando's explanation.

Lovely gave Joaquin her best smile. "I'm always up for a challenge."

"Maybe you are, but this… this is impossible."

"Try me."

He began to dig through the inside pocket of his vest. "The only open bounty prestigious enough to gain you entry these days was a great hunter himself."

A bounty puck was placed on the table. "Many have tried to capture him already, and all have failed."

The puck flickered to life, casting a familiar image into the space between them.

"The Mandalorian."

~

The mood back on the Razorcrest that night was thoroughly dejected.

Mando sat up in his bed compartment, cradling the sleeping child against his chest, perhaps taking more comfort out of it than the baby.

He considered what he could do next.

His only option was freelancing, but those sorts of jobs were few and far between, paid less, and were often of the unsavoury type. He remembered the fiasco that had gone down when he'd joined his old underworld contacts for a prison break.

Lovely was curled up in the hammock she'd strung across the far end of the hold for herself, twisting the unfortunate puck over and over in her hands.

He would have to cut her loose. It would be a sad goodbye, because as much as she irritated him, he'd come to enjoy the company.

It was a shame that she had no talent with a blaster. With her natural instinct for deception and flattery, she would have made a great Bounty hunter in her own right. Maybe she could have even been effective enough to stand a chance at bringing him in…

An idea slipped into his mind, so ludicrous he almost stamped it out immediately.

"I have an idea."

Lovely almost fell out of her bed at his sudden announcement.

"What is it?"

"You're going to become the first bounty hunter to capture the Mandalorian after all."

~

The scheme took another three days of solid planning.

Their plan was a bold one: Mando was to freeze himself in a modified Carbonite tray, which was set on a timer to release him shortly after Lovely hands him into the guild. He would have weapons hidden all over his person to facilitate his easy escape from the transport they had scouted.

It was so crazy, it could almost work.

Their other issue was Carbonite sickness. Mando wouldn't be able to fight his way out if he was blind. Lovely knew how to mix up the antidote of course, but the difficult task was in turning it into an immunisation she could inject him with prior.

Lovely siphoned her final concoction into a needle as Mando worked over an empty carbonite tray, splicing wires in an open panel.

A thought occurred to her.

"When we land in the shipyard, will they recognise your ship?"

"They shouldn't," said Mando. "I've had it re-sprayed since going on the run."

There was another concern that had been keeping her awake last night, since the thought had occurred to her. "Shouldn't we be moving around a bit to throw off tracking fobs?"

"They don't have any fobs on me."

"How do you know?"

"You can't make a biometric tracking fob for just anyone. You have to have a substantial fresh sample of DNA."

Lovely wondered how her mother had got the DNA to be able to track her. She pulled the lifeless fob out of her shirt from where it hung alongside Cerelia's badge and examined it curiously.

"The guild used to have tracking fobs on the kid," said Mando.

"Used to?"

"I was able to destroy all the biometric material they had stored in their lab, so they can't make any more. I think I've deactivated all the fobs they initially made now too. All the ones that have found us so far, at the least."

Thank fuck for that.

~

Mando was nervous when it came time for the freezing. He'd frozen so many people before, but never once had he considered that he would be on the other side of the carbonite one day.

The Razorcrest was in position in the shipyard, and they were just getting everything ready to disembark. He put the baby to sleep in his cradle up in the cockpit and closed it securely. The next time he saw the child, he should be well on his way to providing him the life he deserved.

He met Lovely down in the hold where she waited with a worryingly big needle.

Mando pulled back his sleeve for her to find a vein in his forearm, and tried not to look.

He felt the antidote flowing into his veins, fiery hot.

"How does it feel?"

"Warm."

"That's a good sign. Quickly now, while it's most potent."

Mando stepped into the chamber loaded with the hijacked tray. He rested his hand on his blaster where it was hidden beneath his cape.

"Remember," said Lovely, "If you don't struggle, we can keep the carbonite at a higher temperature so you can stay aware while you're sealed in."

Mando nodded, and braced himself for the cold.

~

Lovely truly enjoyed the unbridled high that came from walking into the Guild cantina as the best bounty hunter in the parsec.

All eyes were on her as she entered. Mando's carbonite tray trailed in her wake. Joaquin waved her over.

She took a seat at his booth.

"How did you do it?"

This was an opportunity for her bravado to shine.

"I guess I'm just really something special."

He grinned and slid a puck across the table to her. "Welcome to the Bounty Hunter's Guild."

A hunter with flaming red hair and pointed teeth drifted closer. "Shouldn't you verify the target first?" She said.

Verify? What was this?

"Of course, we will now, if you'll help," said Joaquin.

Detecting Lovely's confusion, the Bounty Master leant over to whisper her an explanation. "Aspiring hunters have been dressing up decoys in fake armour, thinking we won't unfreeze them to check. I trust you more that those chumps, but it’s just a formality at this point"

Oh no.

The onlooking hunters rallied up around Mando's frozen form, aiming their blasters at him with an air of excitement.

"Blasters at the ready," called Joaquin. "Release the Mandalorian."

~

_"Release the Mandalorian."_

Mando listened to the muffled command through the wall of carbonite and tried to calm the wave of terror that surged through him in the frigid darkness.

He heard a hunter step forward to press the release switch.

Warmth engulfed his body, and he stumbled out into a waft of thick steam that momentarily filled the Cantina.

It slowly dissipated.

Mando emerged from it, blaster drawn.

His eyes met Lovely's briefly. Her bronze mask hid her face, but could still not disguise the dumbfounded horror in her as she faced the enormity of his situation, and just how terribly their plan had been foiled.

Mando, in comparison, felt strangely numb.

“Ah” sighed the Guild Master Joaquin. He looked even haughtier than Mando had imagined, now he saw him in-person. “Only such fighting spirit could come from the real Mandalorian. We finally have him.”

Mando refocused his blaster on Joaquin, but he didn’t even flinch.

The blasters of nearly all two-dozen patrons hummed in his direction. At those odds, they could certainly penetrate the gaps in his beskar armour.

He dropped his blaster and raised his hands, having no choice but to surrender.

"Search him," said Joaquin, and a red-headed hunter elbowed another out of the way for the honour of the task.

She patted him down and retrieved several blasters, his grappling line, flame thrower and vibroblade.

Weapons were his religion, and he felt feeble without them.

"Take him away and get him frozen again,” said Joaquin. “Quickly, the transport to Moff Gideon leaves in ten minutes."

Mando thought of his foundling, soundly asleep in his pram, awaiting the return of a father that may never come.

A pair of off-loaders rushed forwards and took control of Mando and the carbonite tray.

As he was lead from the room, he saw Joaquin approach Lovely and bequeath on her a heavy camtono safe. "I almost forgot, your reward."

~ 

Lovely burst into the cockpit of the Razorcrest, gasping for air. After she'd finally managed to shake all the hunters vying to buy her a drink in the cantina, she'd sprinted like mad to get back to the shipyard in time to see the transport take off.

This wasn't how the plan was supposed to go. All of the weapons Mando would need to defend himself when the timer released him had been confiscated.

"Shit."

She'd really been hoping an idea would have popped into her head by now, but she was drawing a blank.

"Shit, shit, shit!"

Out the window, the transport rose higher and higher. Soon it would disappear into the cloud cover.

She popped open the crib on the right passenger seat, and the baby woke with a surprised jerk.

"Baby, we have to go up there and save your Father."

Lovely was no pilot. She wasn't even sure she could get this big gunship started up, let alone off the ground. The child looked at her with big eyes.

"Do you know how to fly this thing?"

He stared back at her blankly.

"No? Fuck."

There was no time to waste looking for a pilot, she had to follow that guild freighter before she lost it, and Mando, forever.

She had no other option but to try.

She secured the pram down, sunk into the pilot's chair, and began to randomly hit all the buttons and levers within reach. Several made scary screeching tones back at her.

Blessedly, the engines rumbled to life. They were making some pretty outlandish whining noises, and the whole ship was vibrating, but it didn't matter just as long as they were operational.

Lovely seized the control stick and wrenched it up. The Razorcrest gave an almighty groan and lurched into the air. She did her best to guide the ship neatly out of the bay, but it tipped to the left and scraped against the adjacent land speeder.

The child screeched fearfully from his crib. Lovely wanted to comfort him, but she had her hands full.

Finally free of obstacles, she pointed the ship in the direction of the transport, and flattened the acceleration lever to the dashboard.

By the time the Razorcrest caught up to the transport in the upper atmosphere, Lovely realised that docking was going to be an even harder task than taking off.

The ship was already wobbling all over, and the margin of error she had to perform under was slim, but she didn't have a choice to turn back. She directed the ship as best as she could towards the connection point. The left booster chose that critical moment to misfire and send the Razorcrest into a spin.

It was all she could do to hold on. They were spinning out of control,

The ship gained speed exponentially, soon she was slipping out of her seat. Still, she clung to the joystick, pulling as hard as she could to the right as her best guess at corrective action-

A mysterious vibration filled the air.

The ship began to right itself, the g-forces subsided, and a feeling of incredible lightness overtook Lovely.

She emerged from below the dashboard in time to see the Razorcrest settle neatly in the docking apparatus.

Buoyed with her triumph, she spun to the child.

"I did it," she cried.

But the baby was passed out cold.

Oh.

Lovely smiled gratefully, got up and petted his wrinkled head as she left. "Keep it running," she said, and swung down the ladder.

She threw open the weapons cupboard and took possession of the rifle Mando had cautiously denied to her earlier.

This wasn't a time for caution anymore.

~

The second time Mando emerged from the carbonite his vision has a little blurry, but mostly intact. Lovely’s immunisation had thankfully held up for a second round of freezing.

He finally saw the scene he had planned for. A long corridor stacked tight with guild-caught prisoners in carbonite, their faces frozen in varying pictures of terror, all on their way to Moff Gideon.

Het set off along the corridor towards the hum of the engines. His empty hands swung awkwardly at his side.

He knew the escape pod he needed was on the belly of the ship with access through the engine room. The challenge would be to make it there without alerting the guards and crew.

More carbonite prisoners lined the next corridor and the one after that too. There were than Mando had imagined. Moff Gideon must have made amends with the guild since Karga was mutinied from his position. He wondered if Karga was among these unfortunate souls.

But he didn’t have time for an opportunistic rescue mission. If anything, Mando himself was in need of a rescue. Before long he heard footsteps approaching, and did his best to blend in amongst the carbonite trays.

Several patrol guards in dark uniforms were coming his way.

There was no tactical escape route, no blunt objects to wield. Mando was to stand empty-handed and alone amongst his useless, frozen comrades-

Or maybe they weren’t so useless. Mando gave the closest carbonite prisoner a solid shove.

The tray toppled into its neighbour, and it into the next, until the whole corridor of trays ahead were collapsing to the floor. The guards tried in vain to outrun them, but were soon buried with a spine-chilling crunch.

Mando wasted no time and leapt up to clamber over the wreckage to continue his way towards the light. A whooping alarm sounded, signalling that more were coming for him.

~

As Lovely crept around the halls of the transport ship, Mando’s rifle raised, her finger trembled on the trigger.

A sudden alarm blaring made her jump and almost drop the weapon.

“Mando.”

It had to be him. His carbonite tray would have timed out and released him by now. His plan had been to make for the escape pods so Lovely headed in that vague direction. He would surely need help, if it wasn’t already too late.

This transport was manned by a hundred armed soldiers. Moff Gideon didn’t fuck around.

Strangely, she hadn’t encountered any of them yet. She had been sure they would have come to investigate the illegally docked ship, but perhaps they were occupied with their escaped prisoner.

Minutes trickled by as she prowled the corridors. Enormous bangs and disembodied shouts echoed throughout the ship.

Suddenly, a blaster blot ricocheted around the corner ahead of her. Lovely froze on the shot.

Running footsteps were approaching. Lovely hoisted the heavy rifle.

A dark figure slid around the corner, followed soon by a dozen more. They were running straight for her.

Lovely pulled the trigger.

The front runner ducked and the sonic blast flew over their head, hit the durasteel panelled wall at the end of the corridor and disintegrated violently into a thousand, flaming shards.

Lovely shut her eyes to the explosion as the runner tackled her to the floor.

Winded, she sat up and opened her eyes again. The squadron of soldiers were being steadily buried under the flaming debris, and on the floor beside her was Mando.

Before she could remind herself of the perils of their situation she flung her arms around him.

“You’re okay!” She cried with relief.

Mando just shrugged her off of him. “Why were you shooting at me!” He yelled.

“I didn’t know it was you!”

“Have you got the Razorcrest?” He said, urgency in his voice.

“It’s docked on the third level.’

He grabbed her hand, “Let’s go.”

Blaster fire echoed down from a few corridors behind them as the sprinted back the way she’d came. There were still a few guards running around his ship, but not many.

Lovely was puffing to keep up with him, but she still couldn’t hold in her burning question, "How did you escape nearly a hundred soldiers with only your bare hands?"

Mando looked back at her with something she almost considered amusement. “I guess I'm just really something special,” he said. Her words from the cantina echoed back to her.

“Hey, that's my line!”

Mando brought them to a halt in front of the external dock. “Give me that back,” he said and took the rifle from her.

Something brilliant occurred to Lovely. “Wait, we're missing out on something here,” she said quickly as Mando fiddled with the airlock. “They're going to put your bounty back up if you escape…”

“Yes.”

“So maybe,” she continued carefully, “It really would be easier if you stayed captured.”

He’d obviously taken her words the wrong way. His finger drifted to the trigger of the Amban rifle.

Lovely threw her hands up defensively. “Woah! Just think: what if the guild really thought you were frozen? Remember what the master said? About chumps freezing decoys in fake armour?

“But it never fooled the Guild.”

“No, but we've already gotten past the Guild.”

Realisation emerged in Mando’s stance.

~

The mood was victorious back on the Razorcrest as they flew away from the transport. Not another thought was spared for the last unfortunate guard that had been frozen in Mando’s carbonite tray at rifle-point, dressed in makeshift armour.

Mando was back where he was meant to be: At the helm of his ship, with the child securely under his protection. And, he was finally back in the bounty hunting business.

Behind him to the left, Lovely gleefully counted out the winnings in the camtono safe.

“We’re rich!” She exclaimed. “Think of all the foods we can buy now, no more portions!”

Mando piloted with one hand and held the slowly-waking baby in the other, petting his cheek reassuringly with his thumb.

A strange sound drowned out Lovely’s excited tirade. He tilted his head, listening carefully for the source.

It was coming from all around him. It was the _Razorcrest_ making that sick, whining noise.

He spun to his partner with a familiar feeling of exasperation.

“What the fuck did you two do to my ship?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alexa play  
> \- 'Big Shot' by The Pearls  
> \- The 'Second Thoughts' score from The Mandalorian Episode 3 Soundtrack


	3. The Dance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lovely gets a chance to bond with the baby when Mando leaves them together while he goes on a gruelling hunt.

Mando was still a little irate about the state of his ship when they touched down on the green planet of Kashyyyk. It had been a long, awkward flight filled only by the sickly groans of a ship on its deathbed.

He understood that Lovely's perilous first flight had been necessary to save him, but that still didn't help to stem all his resentment. The ship felt like a part of him, after all.

He realised he would have to go back to see Peli Motto. She was the only mechanic he would trust with such an important job, and to not betray him to the guild. But it was a long journey to Tatooine, and for now he had his first bounty to worry about.

The client was a cartel, requesting confirmed kill or capture of a viscous ex-cartel bodyguard by the name of Rawe. There was no fob, though it was standard Guild practice to give rookies the crappiest jobs so Mando wasn't surprised. Thankfully, there was intel in the puck that confirmed he was camping out in the deepest valley of the supposedly haunted Black forest with no transport. He was stuck.

"Why is this guy wanted?" Said Lovely, as she followed him out of the ship to the mossy clearing.

"He screwed up. His charge got assassinated and he ran. Been in hiding ever since.”

"If he's that incompetent, this should be easy for you."

"Best not to underestimate your opponent," cautioned Mando as he loaded pellets into his rifle on the ramp surface. "His failure will have made him more determined. I'll be tracking him manually by heat signature prints, so he could sneak up on me while I've got my head down."

The child wandered across the ramp and fumbled a pellet from the neat pile, and offered it next proudly. Mando took it patiently, nodding his thanks.

He felt a pang of fear to be leaving his foundling, but he knew it was the most rational plan. They'd landed near the peak of a steep hill with a thick tree canopy for cover. It was going to be safer up here than on the valley floor, with a dangerous target on the loose.

"Be careful out there," said Lovely.

"I will."

He meant it. In the past he had never been very concerned for his own safety until his fate became wrapped up with the child's. Now he couldn't bear to think what would happen to the child without him.

Mando passed the baby to Lovely.

"While I'm gone, you've got to look after him. Contact me immediately on the holoprojector if anything happens."

She suddenly looked panicked, and held the squirming infant at arm's length. "I'm not good with kids."

Mando shrugged. "Neither am I."

Having loaded his rifle, he slung it across his back, and set off.

Lovely called after him. "I'm serious, I don't know what to do!"

She was reminding him a little of his missing friend Cara Dune. The ex-dropper had come around to doting on the baby in no time, so he wasn't worried.

"Find him something to eat," Mando suggested.

At the edge of the clearing he took one last look back at them. Lovely had painted over her tattoos with a deep jade pigment today, so _two_ distressed green faces stared back at him. She was straining to keep a hold of the child that was striving in Mando's direction.

As he stepped into the woods her wary voice echoed through the trees. "I'm going to need a bigger cut than twenty if I have to change a diaper!"

~

Lovely had always been awkward around children. She didn’t know how to talk to them at the best of times, and now she was stuck with a kid that was technically older than her. What was she supposed to do? She still wasn't quite sure he understood every word she said.

By Mando's suggestion she foraged the purple berries at the edges of the clearing. The little child made himself a general nuisance, clambering through the undergrowth ahead of her chasing after a lumpy toad.

"Hey don't touch that, it may be poisonous!"

Almost immediately his clothes became stuck in the prickly undergrowth. He squealed and looked at her with wide shining eyes until she rushed to free him.

"That's enough of that," she said, and carried him back to the ship for feeding. But hungry as he was, he refused staunchly to eat any of the purple berries, even when Lovely ate them herself to prove how sweet they were. He was distracted by the same toad which croaked tauntingly from the trees.

"Ok, I'll find something else," she sighed.

But even the tender tubers she dug up and boiled couldn't tempt him. His stomach grumbled, and his little mouth fell into a pout. She nibbled on the tubers herself and sat pondering what to try next.

She suddenly realised he had escaped her again, and was waddling over by the clearing edge.

Upending the pot over the campfire in her he haste to get to him, she discovered the toad's warty legs hanging from his mouth.

"SPIT THAT OUT!"

She snatched him up in a panic and tried to pry the amphibian from the baby's mouth, but that only made him swallow it faster.

He grinned up at her and burped.

Lovely waited for a tense few moments, but the child didn't start convulsing, didn't turn pale.

Oh.

So he was a carnivore.

~

Mando was tracking a day-old trail along a steep creek bank, when he decided to kill the time by contacting Peli. His ship wouldn't last long in its current state, after all.

He dialled his holoprojector to bay three-five in the Mos Eisley Spaceport. The call rang out as he squelched his way through a thick mud.

Eventually, after several minutes of no answer, he cancelled the holo.

It was just like Cara Dune, who he'd been trying to contact for weeks. She'd disappeared just as she was rising through the guild ranks.

He tried Greef Karga next, who hadn't betrayed him after all. But that line rang out too.

What was with everyone? It was like everyone he knew had disappeared from the galaxy.

Mando supposed this was just how life was when you had a price on your head. At least he had the child. He felt a little sympathy for the target he was tracking. Had all his friends abandoned him too?

Just how his target felt didn't get to concern Mando for long, as the man himself dropped down from the trees onto his back, and sent them both rolling through the mud.

~

After a long afternoon of running around the woods after toads, Lovely was finally forming a connection with the kid. He'd ridden happily on her shoulder and pointed each one out to her with the advantage of his keen eyes.

Back at the ship she had a large pot of them over a campfire on the mossy floor, while a funky tune played from the Razorcrest's open doors.

Earlier, she'd fished through her bag of belongings for her beloved music discs. She was able to play them through the Razorcrest's sound system, which appeared to be the only part of the ship she hadn't broken.

She was dicing up some of the other ingredients she'd come across on their toad-hunt.

"Pik moth?" She asked the baby, holding up a fluffy white insect.

He squeaked contently, big ears relaxed.

"Yeah they're good. Protein." She added them to the soup.

"Carras slug?" She offered next.

The Baby narrowed his eyes and snarled at the slimy yellow slug in her hands.

"No? You don't like it? But it's good for you," she tried to convince him. "How are you ever going to grow up to be big and formidable like your Father?"

His little scowl was unrelenting.

"Ok, not today."

He wasn't even likely to notice if she added them anyway, she thought craftily, so she released a pik moth and threw the slugs in while he was distracted.

While she stirred, the next song started. It was her favourite upbeat dancing number. She couldn't stop herself from nodding her head in time with it.

She glanced at the child and saw with a pleasant surprise that he has bopping his head along too, just like her.

"Oh, you like this song?"

She set the soup to simmer gently and ran up to the cockpit to raise the volume.

Bouncing back up to the excited child, she picked him up and settled him on her hip.

"I haven't had someone to dance with in years," she told him wistfully.

Loosing herself in the skipping rhythm, she spun them around shade-dappled clearing. When she waved her hands in time to the lyrics, the child copied her intently.

He really was the purest being she'd ever met. She couldn't believe that she'd been anxious about looking after him just a few hours ago. When he burst into giggles, she laughed along too-

"Your soup is boiling over."

Mando's curt voice spooked her.

He stood by the Razorcrest, holding the cuffed ex-bodyguard Rawe and looking like he'd had a thoroughly shit day. He was covered helmet to boot in crusted mud. The gel bandage on his leg was torn and the re-opened wound leaked fresh blood.

"Oh... Fuck," She gasped.

She rushed to take the pot off the flames and shut off the music. Placing the baby safely out the way, she helped Mando freeze the captive in Carbonite. It wasn't a hard task, as Rawe was surprisingly weak. Lovely suspected from his sodden clothes that he'd almost been drowned.

Mando wasn't much better.

She ducked to check the damage to his reopened wound, but the wound site was so filthy she could barely see it.

Lovely pushed him towards the refresher and helped him slough off the muck from his clothes and armour with the sonic showerhead. He was exhausted, she could tell, which made him compliant for once. She guessed that he'd lost a fair bit of blood.

After that was dealt with, she directed him to the fire where they settled on the soft moss to work on the mess of his leg injury.

"Rough day at work?" She asked casually.

"Muddy."

Like the first time she'd treated him, she offered the anaesthetic vaporiser. This time he accepted, and she turned her back and covered her eyes for a few moments so he could lift his helmet enough to take a hit of it.

His trust in her was growing.

Most of her stitches were still intact except a few, where there was nothing but ragged flesh. She would have to reconstruct that end, and healing would have to start again from scratch.

"What happened?" She said as she got into the task.

"He got the jump on me. Both of our blasters were jammed with mud, so it was down to fists. He went for my stitches. Ripped a few out, I think. He could tell it was my weak point."

"How did you get him?"

"Knocked him into a creek. He couldn't climb out so I gave him a line."

When Lovely finished up she finally poured out some streaming soup for herself and the child. She left plenty in the pot for Mando later. It was his routine to take his meals alone in the cockpit after she and the child were asleep.

She helped the child eat off a spoon. A chorus of toad-croaks filled the darkening forest at dusk. Mando looked like he was falling asleep where he sat.

Or so she thought.

"What was that music you were playing?" He asked suddenly.

" _Punk-Jabba._ Did you like it?"

"No."

"Why?"

"It sounded stupid. Like a random jumble of sounds."

"It's cool. You can dance to it."

"Hmm."

"I'd like to hear what you like, then."

"Maybe."

~

Back on Nevarro, Lovely's second visit to the guild went off with a fair deal less drama than her previous.

Mando waited for her in the marketplace with the child, listening as usual over the intercom while he bought supplies and fuel. He wore a hooded cloak to hide his distinctive armour and helmet, since the city was crawling with bounty hunters.

She bounded up to him at a bone dealer's stall and flashed two new bounty pucks at him.

"I convinced him to give me two!" She exclaimed. "And they've both got fobs."

He already knew, but still nodded appreciatively.

"I got the impression they're still a bit crap though. We're not the first to be assigned them-"

"You did good." Two bounties at once would mean less dangerous trips to Nevarro. It couldn't have been easy to secure as a new member.

"Although you can't almost be getting into fights just because some Wookie looked at you funny. And don't let everyone buy you drinks."

"But they're free drinks, Mando."

"They'll be free poison, one day." He turned to leave.

She skipped after him. "Do I get a reward because I did so well? A bigger cut, perhaps? I could be charging you for babysitting services too, you know. Except I enjoy it so much-"

"Here's your reward." He tossed her the music disk he'd picked up from the market.

She read the inscription aloud. " _Jatz._ I've never heard of it."

"When we get into hyperspace, I'll play it so you and the kid can hear what real music sounds like."

~

The monotonous hum of hyperspace wasn't much improved by Mando's music selection, Lovely thought.

The kid, who'd been sitting up excitedly was beginning to droop lethargically.

Up the front, Mando appeared to be oblivious to the dissent in his shipmates.

Lovely cleared her throat. "This is really the music you like?"

"Yes."

The child's eye were blinking closed as he wavered out of consciousness. The music was like a lullaby.

"Does that helmet affect your hearing or something?" Lovely asked the back of Mando's seat.

"No." He sounded affronted. "It's calming."

"It's _boring_."

At that moment the child must have really drifted off, for he started to fall over the edge of his crib. Lovely dove to catch him just in time.

Mando spun just in time to see the commotion.

"Look, it's putting the kid to sleep," said Lovely.

Mando could only offer her a shrug.

She dropped back into her seat with the kid safely on her lap, deep in thought.

"I've got an idea." She said reached over Mando to the music player controls. "Trust me for a second."

Reinserting her music disk, she began to fiddle with the knobs on the player. She cranked the tempo of Mando's music and slowed her track to match it, then layered them together.

The baby perked up as she sat back to admire her new creation. It had the joyful tempo of _Punk-Jabba_ , with the smoothness of _Jatz_. The best of both genres.

Most importantly, it was something they could dance to. The Baby was rousing to the modified beat, bopping his head like before.

He was so endearing, Lovely could help but bounce and spin him around the cramped cockpit.

~

The baby giggled in Lovely’s arms, and bopped his head along to the skipping beat. He even raised his arms and swung them over his head in an adorable attempt to imitate her.

She really was a terrible dancer, being ever so slightly off-beat, but it was more than made up for with her unfazed confidence. She didn't care.

Seeing that Mando had spun around his chair to watch them dance, she offered her hand to him. The kid blinked at him imploringly with big, glassy eyes.

Mando's heart pinched. He imagined how it might feel to let go and dance uninhibited with them. But he'd never danced before. He didn't know where to even begin.

It was a stupid idea. Dancing was stupid.

So he played it aloof. "I'm looking after _two_ children."

"Suit yourself, Grumpy." Her retort was as offhand as usual, but he was beginning to notice a layer of fondness in them.

Mando turned back to his controls, glad for the helmet that hid his involuntary grin. Even while all his old friends were radio-silent, at least he had unconditional love of the kid a new friend in this ridiculous, rebellious woman.

And she could sure cook a good toad-stew.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'know what they say: The way to a man's heart is through his adoptive, frog-eating, green alien son.
> 
> We will be back to the high-stakes action next chapter.
> 
> Alexa play   
> \- "Don't go breaking my heart" by Elton John  
> \- "I’m a Believer" by The Monkees


	4. Oasis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An idyllic paradise harbours trouble and a dangerous target.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes you just gotta tell Wookiepedia to take the day off and invent your own planets

The sunlight glinting off the still, clear waters of the planet Kandoo was as healing as the Twi'lek baths to Lovely. Too long she had been shut up in the cockpit of the Razorcrest with nothing to look at but the monotonous blur of space and the back of Mando's helmet.

He wasn't the most interesting travel companion. All her attempts to strike up conversation had dwindled into hours of rambling from her end. Mando didn't add much but a grumble of assent whenever appropriate. She guessed it was supposed to add to his grumpy façade. Her second companion, the child, was at least enthralled with her.

She played with him in the ankle-deep ocean that covered the entire planet, helping him collect shells off the bottom. His eyes grew wide as she showed him how to coax out the hermit crab from their latest find. The Razorcrest was hidden close by amongst the mangrove islands a little way out from the village they'd tracked their next target to. Mando was by the side of the ship, welding a panel back onto the hull that had come unstuck upon entry to the atmosphere.

To her great disbelief, he still wore his full suite of beskar. It was blindingly reflective under the blazing midday sun. She herself had stripped down to her bandeau and sarong to better soak in the warmth and salt water. She could only imagine how hot it would be for him under all that metal.

Mando stepped back from his repair job, and Lovely came over to inspect the work.

She wasn't a mechanic by any means, but even she could see that it was a shoddy job. But it would have to do.

Mando seemed to have the same opinion. "It's the best I can do. We need money for proper repairs."

She patted him on the shoulder in hopes of reassurance, but had to quickly retract her hand from the burning hot beskar.

This was just getting ridiculous. She couldn't resist asking him any longer.

"Are you really going to splash around in that tin can?"

He looked at her like she was the stupid one. "Beskar doesn't rust," he said simply.

All she could do was laugh. There was no point pushing the issue with him and his persistent stubbornness. 

Mando took out his tracking fob and studied the lazy, beeping tone for a few seconds, reconfirming the target's suspected position to the south-west. The conclusion was that he was staked out a similar distance away from the remote fishing village as they were.

"Are you ready to go?" he said.

The plan was to travel to the village to first gather supplies and intel. An outsider such as their target, the wealthy Count Kaa, would have been taken note of if he'd ever entered the village. Lovely hung a new basket bag over her shoulder and settled the child into it. It sat comfortably at her hip, and had a handy lid which could be used to conceal him if necessary.

"We're ready," Lovely said. The child squealed in anticipation.

Mando secured the ship, slung his rife across his back and began to lead the way out. His water-laden boots sloshed heavily through the crystalline water.

"You aren't even taking your boots off?" she called after him.

He was either out of earshot, or deliberately ignoring her.

She hurried to catch up, marvelling at the persistence of this man.

~

Mando was burning up under the Kandoo sun in his armour, and was grateful for the sight of the village after an hour's slog through the ankle deep water.

Rickety wooden stilts held the bustling fishing village up over the water. It was a good place for a fugitive to hide out. The village was almost entirely self-sustaining, so rarely saw outside visitors. Count Kaa was smart in this regard.

It would however make him easier to find, now Mando had finally tracked him to this planet. But there was a cause for caution: according to the information on his puck, the last two hunters who'd been assigned to him had disappeared in action.

The centre of the settlement was busy with fishermen trading their day's catch with local craftsman and families. Afraid of becoming separated in the crowd, Mando instructed Lovely to stay close to his side.

They felt the suspicious eyes of the locals on them as they walked around the market. Mando thought it wise to buy their supplies first, and then perhaps they could ask some vendors once they realised they meant no trouble.

Riding in the basket at her hip, the child peeked out with shining, curious eyes. After stocking up on a sensible mix of fresh and dried food, they had a little currency left to give him a small treat. They decided on one of the greasy skewers that every seller was trying to push on them. Mando's heart swelled with satisfaction to see him happily nibbling the fried hermit crabs from his comfy seat.

Once finished, the kid even reached greedily for them in the passing seller's carts. Mando had to steer Lovely away several times to stop him getting his little hands on another.

While Mando assessed which local to ask for information, Lovely wandered the nearby miscellaneous stalls. He considered the kindly fishwife close by. It appeared she knew all the local's names, and she'd smiled at him when they'd bought her dried eel.

Lovely was eyeing off an expensive pot of foiled gold clay-paint. Knowing her proclivity for shoplifting, he watched her carefully. As if sensing his gaze, she jolted out of her reverie, shrugged at him sadly, and returned to his side.

For a second Mando's mind sunk into the possibility of purchasing it for her, tempted to elicit that look of animated joy that crossed her face so easily at the smallest gesture of kindness. He imagined how she would layer it over the yellow stripes she wore today, and gush about it for hours and hours.

But the thought dissipated as soon as it struck. They had to spend their funds wisely, or they would be back to eating stale portions. And besides, it wasn't his responsibility. Once they were on their feet, with the ship repaired, they'd earn their separate cuts. What she bought for herself then would be her own decision.

~

Lovely made her way back to Mando's side, feeling a little embarrassed that he'd caught her considering the gold paint. Not that she'd been planning to steal it, of course.

 _Although_ , the little voice inside her head pointed out that she rarely thought these things out anyway. It was more often an impulsive behaviour.

When she stepped up to Mando, the sight of the man walking behind him made her excuses die on her tongue. She recognised him from the bounty puck Mando had been studying just that morning, right down to his smart suit and neat appearance. He was Count Kaa.

"Don't move," she whispered.

Mando tilted his head in confusion, but otherwise obeyed her.

She watched the back of the Count's head steadily, determined not to lose him in the crowd despite the strange looks she received from those around him.

"Count Kaa just walked straight past us," she explained, after the Count was a safer distance away.

"No," said Mando, disbelief in his voice. He pulled the tracker from his pocket. Sure enough, it was beeping furiously.

~

Mando had him. It was all so easy. There was no need to wheedle intel out of the suspicious locals, no need to track him through the mangroves.

He followed Kaa down a side street, tracker in hand. They were almost alone, except for a few children sitting in the doorways, a big green-skinned Twi'lek between them, and an armoured man ahead.

Mando closed the gap. He was only a few paces behind Kaa. He could jump him now, audience be damned.

The big Twi'lek glanced back at Mando, and the flash of recognition in his black eyes made Mando's stomach drop.

Mando froze dead in his tracks.

The Twi'lek caught up to Kaa, whispered in his ear, and the Count turned, a cool smirk splashed across his face.

The armoured man ahead of him stopped too. All three stared back at Mando, standing stupidly in the open.

The other two weren't an unwitting audience after all. They were the previous hunters sent after Kaa, turned sides.

Mando was outnumbered.

~

Lovely had been by herself for barely a minute, standing up on her toes to see where Mando had disappeared to, when he came rushing back.

"Mando?"

With no explanation, he grabbed her hand and pulled her into his mad sprint.

He was fast, and she struggle to keep pace. Sensing the magnitude of their situation, she pushed herself to keep up with him.

Mando pulled her along through the market, weaving through the crowd. The basket bounced violently by her side. He led them towards the docks, down a ladder to the shallow water below, and into the shadows amongst the barnacle-encrusted pillars.

They were both breathing hard from the sprint. Mando checked the child. He was unharmed but thoroughly bewildered. He cooed at Mando curiously.

"What happened?"

"Count Kaa has bought himself some protection."

Just at that moment, heavy footfalls thundered over them on the planks above, and came to a halt. Mando took up her hand again, and pulled her deeper under the docks, away from their pursuers above, though they were still close enough to hear every word of the men's conversation.

"Which way did they go?" came the first, gravelly voice.

Lovely's hand tightened around Mando's.

A second responded, "They?"

"Didn't you see?" said the first. "He took off with the woman and child he was with before."

"Lucky for us then. Not so much for him."

"Circle back to the Count, I'll go along the dock."

The footsteps above receded in opposite directions. Lovely didn't let out her breath until all that could be heard was the gentle slap of the waves on the pylons. She felt the tension ease in Mando too. His shoulders dropped and his hand became heavier in hers.

She was still holding his hand. Crushing it, actually.

Suddenly realising that it was long past necessary, she dropped it like a burning coal. If Mando noticed her flaming cheeks, he politely ignored them. He pulled out the tracker again, taking stock of Count Kaa's direction and estimating the distance.

"Count Kaa is at the far end of the village. Probably about to leave for his hideout."

He took the blaster from his hip and pressed it into her hands. "Take the child straight back to the Razorcrest," he instructed. "Activate ground protocol and don't open the doors until I get back."

"You're going after him now?" The prospect of separating scared Lovely. The blaster felt heavier than she remembered.

"I have to, before they have time to prepare for me, or alert the guild."

He gave the child a quick, reassuring pet on the cheek before replacing the lid to the basket. It had such a soothing effect on the little creature that Lovely had a sudden urge to request one for herself too.

She pushed the ridiculous thought down quickly.

"Be smart. Think ahead," he said, and slipped away.

~

When Mando reached the opposite side of the village, tracker in hand, clean mooring lines hung loose off the side of the jetty. He was too late, Kaa had already escaped.

"Mando, you've kept me waiting."

With lightning-fast reflexes, Mando aimed his Ambean rifle at his oncoming opponent. The ex-hunter Twi'lek approached him from the side. He had his blaster trained on Mando similarly, though he seemed in no hurry to start a shootout. He kept talking.

"Where's the wife and kid, Mando? Won't your girl be missing you?" The Twi'lek flashed his pointed yellow teeth.

Mando's gut twisted uncomfortably at the ex-hunter's assumption. He considered how he and Lovely must have appeared, running hand-in-hand, the child in tow.

Mando strained to remain still, his eyes flicking around behind his visor to locate an escape route, checking for the second guard-

"Isn't this a nice place to take the family for vacation? Sorry to ruin your fun, Mando, but you picked the wrong planet."

Out on the water a little fishing vessel disappeared into the horizon. Was the second guard on it with Kaa?

"Maybe after we get you, we can find your woman and the little womp rat too.-"

Mando's finger squeezed on the trigger. The ex-hunter continued to goad him.

"-Keep them company. Give her a little solace.-"

Something searing with electricity struck the back of Mando's helmet.

The tracker fell from his hands as his rifle fired, but the blaster bolt to the head had knocked him off his aim. It missed the Twi'lek, now racing towards him.

Mando barely had time to brace before the Twi'lek slammed into him, and they careened off the side of the jetty together.

~

Lovely had made it back to the ship in impressive time, utilising the peak of low tide to run across the exposed sandbars where she could.

The child was fussing when she extricated him from the basket back in the safety of the Razorcrest. He hadn't enjoyed being bounced around. He began to whine in distress.

For his sake, Lovely tried to placate her growing anxiety with reason. _Be smart, think ahead,_ Mando had said.

But she couldn't even get her useless brain to process that dumb urge she'd had to take comfort from his leather-gloved hand on her cheek. Feeling a little foolish, she lifted her own hand to her cheek, shutting her eyes for a second.

It didn't slow her racing heart, but she was at least able to take a deep, calming breath.

The child reached for her, begging to be held. She paced around, rocking him gently. He continued to cry.

Unbidden, the image of her own father as he had looked when she was just a young girl came to her mind. She remembered how he'd play games to distract her when she'd had nightmares, even in the dead of night. She remembered her absolute favourite: how they'd made a game out of tickling, chasing each other around her bedroom until she was no longer afraid of the shadows in the corners.

It wouldn't hurt to try.

The baby looked at her strangely as she brushed her fingertips under his jaw, but the sobbing halted. He leant away in confusion.

He was ticklish! Lovely could have laughed with relief.

She curled up with him opposite the door, and taught him the game as she had once been taught.

Soon, she was screaming with laughter, craning her chin away from the child's eager little claws. His shrill giggles filled the ship, and for a while, Mando's absence was almost forgotten.

Eventually, pounding on the ship door made them both jump.

"It's me!" came Mando's modulated voice.

Lovely ran to release the ramp, and passed the reaching child to him as he reached the top.

It was clear he'd been in a fight. He was dripping wet, with sand settled in the crevices of his armour and a layer of blaster dust across the back of his helmet.

Lovely began to brush the sand from his pauldrons, but he swatted her away gently.

"There's still one guard out there, and Kaa too," He said, moving to the ammunition cabinet to gather more rounds for his rifle.

Still holding the child with one arm, he struggled to load them into the ammunition strap across his chest. Lovely shuffled forward to help him, but again, he brushed her off.

Lovely took the hint and stepped back from him, a little confused by the change in his attitude to her.

"The tracker is gone," he said as he slid the last round into place.

"Shit."

"While one guard distracted me, the other ambushed me from behind. He took the tracker and fled while I dealt with the first."

The situation was direr than Lovely had imagined. "Is it worth carrying on? We don't have to if it's too dangerous. We can move on to the next bounty-"

"I won't give up."

She knew his mantra. _This is the way._

"What are you _doing_?" His attention switched to the child, whom was scratching at the fabric around Mando's neck.

Lovely recognised immediately that he was trying to include Mando in their tickling game.

"Are you ticklish?" She laughed. "We were playing a game before-"

Mando snapped. "We're in serious danger and you're just teaching him to mess around?"

By reflex, her voice rose to the same level as his. "We were just passing the time while you were away! We were worried about you-"

"You don't need to be worried about me-"

"I can't help it!"

There was an awkward pause. Lovely held her ground. Mando's next words came quietly, but the tone he took was of one scolding a misbehaving child.

"You're getting too comfortable here," he said. "Remember what I hired you for. Have some professionalism."

~

As Mando left the Razorcrest to finish his mission, he tried to tell himself that what he said was necessary.

It was that casual closeness, the laughter and the familiarity that had drew the guard's attention to her and the child, inspiring their sick assumptions. It was for their own safety that he needed to maintain a distance.

Mando tried to let this reasoning usurp his feelings of regret, but it wasn't working too well. His mind kept returning to the flash of hurt in her eyes. There was nothing else for it, but to throw himself wholeheartedly into his mission.

Without his tracker, the only lead Mando had was the fishing boat he'd seen disappear on the horizon. Back at the village, he hired his own water-speeder, and set out in the same direction. The landscape west of the village was thankfully more open, so he was soon able to locate the lone vessel.

As Mando drew closer, rifle ready, a lone figure rose from the boat, his own weapon aimed in return. Mando drew closer, and recognised him as the second, armoured guard. He appeared to be alone.

Up close, Mando could see that his armour was a mix of old imperial plastisteel, upgraded with new durasteel parts. His helmet covered just the upper half of his face, leaving his grim smudge of a mouth visible.

He let Mando approach, but kept his weapon raised. "Aren't you scared, Mando?" he called.

Mando dismounted. "I've seen far worse than you before."

The guard stepped out of his boat too, careful of the fishing net overhanging the side. "You should be sacred," he said. "You were foolish to come here."

They were the typical tough words of a hunter, but there was something in his tone that made Mando pause. He was alluding to something.

Before Mando could question him, he saw the guard's arm tense, and he had only a split-second to match his attack.

Their weapons fired at the same time. The bolts crossed in the middle and met their targets. Mando's effort shattered the guard's blaster in his hands. Likewise, the guard's bolt travelled down the barrel of the Ambean rifle, kicking it back against Mando's chest. The trigger went limp and useless.

They met each other's eyes, both concealed behind dark visors. The guard threw down his shattered blaster into the ocean. Mando stowed his beloved rifle across his back.

Both their hands were empty.

The guard raised his fists, a nasty grin visible under his half-helm. "That poor girl. Alone in that big ugly gunship of yours-"

A chill rushed through Mando. How did he know Lovely was back at the ship?

"-You must be one ugly motherfucker under that helmet to have whelped that _thing_ off of her. Maybe she'll be so happy to be rid of you, she'll-"

Mando shot the grappling line from his wrist into the net overhanging the boat, yanking it forward to tangle the guard's legs.

The man fell down into the water, and before he could get up, Mando rushed over and jumped onto his chest, pushing his face below the surface.

The man thrashed around, bubbles rising in a furious scream. His hands clutched desperately at Mando's shoulders, then the sandy ocean floor, but for no use. Mando held firm.

When the guard's fight finally started to wane, Mando pulled him back into the air.

"How did you know!?" He shook the man urgently.

The man spluttered, spewing up seawater, and refused to answer.

A spike of rage clouded Mando's mind, tinting his vision red. He forced the man back under the water, holding him down through renewed struggles.

The guard's hands finally tapped against Mando's chest plate in consignation. Mando reluctantly brought him up.

"I was tracking you before," he gasped.

Mando's heart sank.

"Kaa wants to offer you a job," the man said, "He always takes a bargaining chip. He's gone to your ship now."

~

Lovely searched the Razorcrest for her scattered belongings, throwing them haphazardly into her rucksack. The child watched her anxiously, hanging down from the cockpit.

In the hour that Mando had been gone, she'd worked herself into such a rage that she'd decided that no money, no job, was worth the experience she was put through working with the Mandalorian. She was constantly putting her life on the line, which wasn't part of the deal, for no thanks.

While packing, she paced furiously along the length of the ship, vibrating with rage, mumbling to herself.

"Hey you up-tight, self-important Mandalorian, here's my official resignation holo… Oh, it’s spoken in fluent _Mando'a_ , captured on an embossed obsidian hard-disk, and notarised by Grand Moff Tarkin himself… How's that for fucking professionalism?"

She startled when a rough pounding on the door pulled her out of her tirade. He was back.

Good. It was time to give him a piece of her mind.

She ran to the door, pulled the safety latch over, and activated the ramp. Before it had even reached the ground, she'd already started.

"Listen, _asshole_! I'm leaving you and this shit-stain of a job - _oh_."

Mando wasn't at the bottom of the ramp.

It was Count Kaa.

"Afternoon," he said, and smiled as if she'd been expecting him around for afternoon tea.

~

When Mando finally crept up to the Razorcrest, there was no doubt in him that something was terribly wrong. The door was cracked open, and inside was dark and silent.

He'd parked his speeder behind a nearby mangrove island and snuck up to the ship on foot. He'd wanted nothing more but to rush in and find his Child and Lovely, but all his hunting instincts told him to approach with caution.

The impressive shields on the Razorcrest's hull meant that he couldn't even use his heat-radar to scan for lifeforms inside. He was going in blind.

He slipped under the ship beside the landing gear and located the service hatch. He worked on opening it as quietly as possible. Once it was lowered, he peeked his head up through the opening, his rifle poised at the ready. It was still unusable from the blaster hit, but an empty threat was better than nothing.

Lovely was cowering in the corner by the refresher, wide-eyed and clutching the child, but thankfully unharmed. She met his eyes, but there was no sigh of relief, only renewed anxiety. She flicked her gaze intently towards something behind Mando.

He heeded her warning and spun around to find Count Kaa sitting opposite her on an upturned crate, legs crossed leisurely and a beautiful, gold-plated blaster trained right at Mando's neck.

His plan was foiled.

"Would you join us?" said Kaa.

As Mando pulled himself up into the hold, he eyed his cabinet of working artillery. He considered how fast he could get it open and how many hits he could take in that time until Kaa found a gap in his beskar.

It may have been worth a go, except Mando was concerned for the child and Lovely. What if Kaa turned on them instead?

He stuck to his rifle, and hoped that Kaa wouldn't notice its defectiveness.

Kaa was still smiling. "Miss Lovely can catch you up on my offer, can't you my dear?"

Lovely's voice trembled. "H-he wants to offer you a job as his new guard. He can give you twice what the guild is offering, paid every month… And a bonus for every bounty hunter you defeat."

Mando levelled a steady glare at Kaa. "Mandalorians don't take bribes."

Kaa sighed theatrically. "I knew we would run into this issue. Your kind are a stubborn lot. So, naturally I had to take my own precautions to ensure that you would see the sense in making this deal with me. Look closely at your child, Mandalorian. You will see that he is very much enjoying the gift I presented to him in trust."

Mando's gaze broke away from Kaa for the first time and flew to the panelled metal ball the child was happily sucking on. He recognised it as one of the remote explosives from his stash.

When Mando looked back to Kaa, he had a detonator in his other hand.

"I don't offer bribes, Mandalorian. I offer opportunities. Now, drop your weapon, please. I'm beginning to think you rude."

Mando felt he had no choice. He dropped his rifle to the floor. Without it he felt unnaturally light, untethered.

"Right now, you have the opportunity to save your family," said Kaa. "I'm a generous man, the offer of payment still stands if you play nicely."

Mando had no inclination to 'play nicely'.

He still had one weapon left to him: the flame thrower on his wrist. It was dangerously low on the expensive lighter fluid, and would last only a few seconds: Not long enough to finish Kaa, but it could make for a good diversion. He tried to catch Lovely's eyes, to signal her to move quickly once he started.

But he couldn't get her attention. She was instead eying the rifle on the floor with the same desire she'd had for the gold paint in the market. He'd just have to hope she would catch on.

"What will it be, Mandalorian?" said Count Kaa, raising his blaster higher.

Mando shot a wall of flame towards him.

The Count shielded his face, toppling backwards off the crate. His blaster discharged. The bolt flew through the flames, deflected off Mando's beskar helmet, and ricocheted around the hold.

Mando turned to Lovely, but thankfully she was already in action. She tore the explosive from the child's grip and tossed it through the service hatch. The ship rocked suddenly and a torrent of seawater shot up through the hatch as the device detonated underneath.

"Mando!" She screamed, pointing.

Kaa was gaining his footing, the golden blaster rose again.

Mando jumped forward and wrestled the weapon upwards. More bolts spewed from the blaster, searing holes into the pipes on the ceiling.

Lovely was there too, jumping on Kaa's back, clawing at his face.

The Count was surprisingly strong, and had the advantage of having his finger in the trigger.

He pushed the blaster in the direction of the child, curled up in the sonic shower. A red bolt bounced around the refresher, shattering the mirror.

Red, hot fury flooded Mando. He wrenched the gun from his enemy's grip. He marked his target, right between his bloody eyes-

The Count threw Lovely off and straight at Mando, breaking his aim. Her head smacked onto his beskar chest with a hollow ring. He wished she'd just been with the child still, shielding him.

Kaa was backing out of the Razorcrest. Mando took aim again. The trigger locked up.

It was a damn fingerprinted blaster. It would only work for Kaa.

The man was on the ramp now, riding it down as it was still lowering.

Mando charged at him, and shoved Kaa off the end.

"Mando?"

Lovely was crawling to her feet again.

"Give me a gun!" He shouted to her.

He leapt down into the water and exchanged blows with Kaa.

Mando had the advantage of the high ground and beskar, but the weight of it combined with his layers of waterlogged clothes soon gave Kaa an opportunity to squirm free.

Lovely called Mando from the doorway, and threw him down a gun. Mando caught it: His broken Ambean rifle.

Damn it.

Mando grasped the barrel and swung it against the side of Kaa's skull like a club. A sickening crack, and Kaa crumpled.

Finally, the vice-like constriction around Mando's chest eased.

~

"Should we... Should I patch up his head before we freeze him? I think you shattered his skull."

Ordinarily, they would. Mando took care of his charges. He always returned them in one piece.

She almost wished he'd say 'no'. Her mind kept circling back to the detonator.

"The carbonite will keep him preserved. It's the client's problem now."

She couldn't hide her sigh of relief. Together they dragged Kaa's limp form to the carbonite chamber, froze him, and stored him away. The child tugged at Mando's leg to be picked up. Mando held him close while they stood for a while, appreciating their work.

They finally looked at each other properly. The memory of their earlier argument came rushing back: his unfair, uncalled for assessment. Her temper, so quick to flare. Her decision to leave.

In his arms, the child reached up under the lip of his helmet to tickle his jaw. Lovely held her breath.

But Mando laughed, like she'd never heard before. Even through the voice modulator, she could hear the relief in it, the exhaustion too.

She hung her head. Suddenly, her decision to leave felt foolish. They weren't perfect, but staying wasn't even half as bad as the prospect of returning to her solitary life.

Feeling eyes on her, she looked up to find Mando staring.

"You look like you have something important to say," he said.

She couldn't ignore how her heart had fluttered when Count Kaa had referred to the three of them as a 'family' _._ She didn't want to give this up, and not just because there was nothing for her anywhere else, there was actually _something_ here.

Not that she was ever going to admit that to him.

Lovely rubbed the rising lump on the side of her head. "Can't you wear some padding? You're a kriffing safety hazard."

"Wear your helmet," he said.

She could hear the smile through the waver in his voice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Damn... Sorry for the unplanned two-month hiatus y'all, sometimes life just happens. 
> 
> Coming back to all your comments and kudos motivated me like nothing else. I'm forever thankful!
> 
> Alexa Play:  
> \- The 'Little Mousey" theme from The Mandalorian Episode 6  
> \- 'Stand by Me' by Ben E. King


	5. High Society

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A difficult bounty requires Lovely to help Mando go undercover.

When Mando returned to the Razorcrest after a long day tracking in the old town district of Canto Bight, Lovely could tell he'd had no success. The affluent city was harbouring their last bounty: Ado Haddar, the runaway son of a famous architect wanted on charges of patent theft.

Mando threw down the tracker, dropped heavily onto a crate and set to repairing his broken rifle, without a word of greeting to her and only a nod towards the confused Child. Lovely had been whiling away the boredom walking laps of the Razorcrest, rolling a ball with the tireless child and watching roots grow on a leftover gimerbush cutting.

Her curiosity was burning. The child waddled up to Mando, eyes big, and began to tap insistently on his shin.

"What happened today?" Asked Lovely.

"He's playing with us."

"Us?"

"There's a dozen other hunters here, staking Haddar out."

He sounded exhausted, like he could have had his eyes closed under the helmet. He didn't even notice the demanding child at his feet.

"How has he not been caught yet?"

"I don't know."

Lovely returned to her propagating gimerbush, letting him have a much needed moment to collect his energy.

When he spoke again, he began with a deep breath. "There are lots of guarded cantinas and casinos here. It would be impossible to arrest him inside. He knows it. He waved at me from the balcony of one. Taunting me. But I don't know how he gets around between. The tracker leads to nothing."

In the several days since capturing Kaa, Lovely had thought they wouldn't possibly find a bounty more difficult. Maybe she’d been too optimistic.

"Would it really be so impossible to get past some guards?" She asked.

"This town is run by organised criminals, they don't mess around," said Mando. "The guards are all IG droids."

"You can take on an IG unit."

"One or two? Maybe. But there are thousands working in this city. For example, at the Canto Gala tomorrow, they'll have a dozen in the main hall and twice that outside."

"The Canto Gala is tomorrow?" She'd heard of this particular annual Gala before.

"It's all the town is talking about," said Mando.

As a child, she remembered her father complaining of it being a haven for those on the run from his justice department. It was the biggest event in the calendar for the galaxy's richest criminals.

"We'll have to wait until he moves on again," said Mando, defeated. He picked the child up and cradled him close, unperturbed when little green claws continued their tapping on his visor.

Lovely found herself disagreeing with his assessment. With Haddar's talent for giving hunters the slip, it could very well end up costing them more that he's worth in fuel to follow him planet to planet. They were also unlikely to find another opportunity to know his location in advance.

"Mando, I think going for him at this Gala is your best shot."

His helmet tilted in question, so she explained her reasoning to him. She recognised by the hardening of his shoulders that he accepted her logic.

"He'll have his guard down. You just need to lure him away from the protection of the droids," she said, trying to be helpful.

"This is a strange place. I don't blend in well. He'll be onto me." At Mando’s feet, the child continued his irritating plight for attention, to no avail.

Mando did stand out in Canto Bight, shabby in the old cloak he used to disguise his Beskar. She had an idea.

"Let me help you."

"What can you do?"

She gave him a baleful smile. "High society is unfortunately an area of my expertise."

He nodded, understanding.

Her grin turned mischievous. "Of course, in this case a fifty-fifty split of his Bounty is only fair-"

"No."

"Then maybe I can't help you."

Mando finally caught the child's paw to still his incessant tapping.

"We're not going back to Nevarro until I have him in Carbonite," He told her. "So you can either help this process along, or wait around until I do it."

Damn, he was a strong haggler. Some would even call it blackmail. She considered all the hours of boredom she would have waiting on his damn ship.

"Okay, I'll help."

Mando played with the child on his lap.

Lovely began to pace, hashing out a plan aloud. "We should go separately, so Haddar doesn't know we're working together. And we need to make sure we're presentable enough to be allowed in.”

The ratty cloak he used for disguise would have to go.

“It's time to shine your bucket,” she announced, “You're going to the ball."

"Won't the beskar attract too much attention?" He said.

"That's the point," she replied. "No one here cares about anything but the credits in your pocket."

"I haven't got any credits," he said.

"No," she agreed, "But you could look like it."

Lovely was finding it refreshing to be the one with all the expertise for once.

"And how are _you_ getting in?" Mando asked.

The content burbling of the child filled the silence. Meanwhile, Lovely's mind was playing through possibilities.

"I'll sort something out."

~

Lovely had been right about the entrance requirements of the gala. When Mando arrived at the gates to the Spice Lord's palace the next evening, his armour gleaming in the sunset light, he was waved inside ahead of the line.

A flurry of nervousness hit him. He didn’t usually feel this way about bounty hunting, but this was out of his comfort zone. He wished he was like the child, sound asleep and tucked away safely in his bed aboard the Razorcrest.

The IG droids eyed Mando suspiciously as he passed them at the entrance to the main, busy ballroom. They would have not allowed guests to open carry firearms, so Mando's felt strangely light without his usual hip holster and rifle. He would have to rely on his hidden wearable weapons for this mission.

The ballroom was a large cavernous gold room, lined with balconies and a marble floor in the middle, already swarmed with partners in synchronised dances.

Mando spied his target upon one of the exclusive balconies, sipping wine and talking to the Spice lord himself. Mando kept his distance and milled about idly for an hour, waiting for Lovely to make contact over the intercom when she arrived.

 _"I'm in,"_ she announced finally.

"Good. He's on the rear balcony."

" _Everyone's looking at me."_

Everyone but Haddar, it seemed. He was sending Mando a malicious glare from across the ballroom.

"He's looking at me. He knows I'm here for him. Go for the approach now," Mando urged. "Ask him to dance."

This was the plan.

_"Wait, I've got a better idea. You dance with me."_

He almost choked. "That's not the plan. You're supposed to dance with _him_."

_"I will, but trust me, it's going to work so much better this way. He hates you, and he's cocky. He likes winning against bounty hunters-"_

She appeared right before him, downing the dregs of a wineglass and placing it on a passing server’s tray. "-So give him something to win off of you," she finished.

He could see now why she was attracting stares. She wore a long, slinky iridescent gown that glittered in the lights, and a tiny purse on a belt that would contain the miniature blaster and cuffs he’d pressed her to carry in the case of an emergency. Her hair was pulled up into the double braided buns of the old Alderaan style to hide the intercom on her ear.

If it wasn't her attire that turned heads, it was her bare face where the tattooed elderflower and crest of Organa were displayed to the world.

He didn't know what to say, so he just offered his hand. She accepted with a smirk.

As he followed her to the floor he couldn't decide if her gown was a hint transparent under the light, or if his imagination was just overreacting.

They joined the circle of dancers poised for the next song, all posed bizarrely, both facing the same way so that one partner's back rested against the others chest. Lovely seemed to know exactly what was happening.

She turned to him. "Can you lead?"

Mando was frozen. How did he get himself into this situation?

She took his petrified silence for a 'no' and turned her back to him, placed one of his gloved hands on her waist and held the other.

"Right foot first, we rotate following our hands through each count of three, then pause for one. Repeat. Copy my steps exactly and don't step on my heels."

She could have been speaking Jawaese for all Mando understood of it, but it was too late. The drums struck up a doleful beat, and they were off.

Mando stumbled to follow her at first, but thankfully the dance started slow. He watched her feet for a few turns, which she helpfully exaggerated, until he finally fell into the rhythm of it.

It was really quite easy; like practicing footwork for combat. After several repetitions, he was able to look up from his feet.

"Haddar is watching," whispered Lovely, as they spun past the balcony. Mando saw too that their target was glaring at them intently.

Her dress was slippery against his glove. Mando realised it was quality durasteel chainmail. Expensive.

"Where did you get this?" He asked, already fearing the answer.

"I've found there are certain establishments that always lack security. Seamstresses, for example."

"You know how I feel about you stealing."

"I'm just borrowing it."

The guests gathered around chatted idly and watched the dance between sips of wine.

"Dancing is the only thing I miss about my old life," Lovely said suddenly.

Mando was taken aback. Despite how much she talked, she'd never willingly brought up her past.

"But not enough to make you go back," he said.

"If I ever went back, it would be for one more royal ball."

The drums began to pick up speed, and so did they. The room became a blur.

"After we've caught Haddar, you can spend your cut on a dress and go back for a ball," Mando suggested.

"No, that would just be a waste of credits." She laughed. "I'd much prefer to mortify my mother and go in rags."

"You want to be a spectacle?"

"It would be fun! I'll get drunk; set the drapes on fire; dance exclusively with all the unhappy wives to see which ones are willing to leave their diplomat husbands."

Lovely drew in closer as they turned faster and tighter. The bared skin of her back pressed against his Beskar.

"You'll get into a fight," said Mando. He was beginning to enjoy himself.

Lovely was unfazed. "Oh yes, losing a fight can be the finale."

"I can back you up if you want to win."

" _That_ will be brilliant. Showing up with a bounty hunter."

"How will you explain it?"

"I won't. I'll just let them stare-"

The drumming beat reached a crescendo and they halted in their last spin.

Haddar stood right in front of them.

"Hunter, would you mind if I cut in now?" He said, extending his pale hand.

The room kept spinning, and Mando hesitated. He imagined refusing to give Lovely away, so they could keep dancing all night...

Lovely looked at him over her shoulder, eyes wide. He remembered their plan.

"No, I don't mind," Mando said stiffly, and transferred Lovely's hand to Haddar's.

As they swept away, Haddar gave Mando a look that made his blood boil.

"My lady," he said to Lovely, still within earshot, "I just had to take you under my wing. Such talent shouldn't be wasted on an incapable partner. He almost looked like a rusty droid next to you."

Lovely laughed, but it was different to how she'd laughed before. It reminded Mando of how she acted with the patrons of the dirty Cantina.

"Oh no," she said, "A droid could dance better."

When the dizziness subsided, Mando melted back into the crowd.

~

Lovely hoped Mando wouldn't be too offended at her sharing insults with Haddar. It was all part of the scam.

And Mando had eventually danced better that she could have imagined.

The opening notes of another familiar song struck up. She and Haddar took up their position for the next dance, face to face, their hands clasped and crossed between them.

Haddar was young, her age or perhaps even younger. His fine, delicate features and the long, dark curls that fell past his shoulders marked him as the pretty type that she would often go for. When they began to dance, Lovely could tell that he was well experienced.

This guy was smart. He'd clocked Mando as a bounty hunter from across the room. The worst thing was that he knew his intelligence, and he wanted everyone else to know it too. Only such a man would have confronted a bounty hunter so blatantly.

But that arrogance was what made him just a little bit stupid.

"You called that Mandalorian a hunter, before. I didn't even know," She said. Luckily, arrogant men were her speciality.

"If I'm not mistaken, he's here for me."

"You've got a bounty on your head?"

"The highest in this parsec."

It was a bold lie, but she wasn't about to correct him on it. He was only trying to sound impressive.

"Why do you want to know?" His voice was low with suspicion. "Are you tempted by it? Are you going to bring me in?"

A lesser practiced liar would have been shaken, but Lovely had nerves of steel. "It's certainly tempting," she said, "But who would I dance with then?"

He returned her uninterrupted gaze. She dare not look away. She needed to get him away from the crowd so Mando could move in on him.

He leant in close. "Let's find someplace where that hunter can't glare at us," he whispered.

Perfect.

Haddar seemed to know exactly where he was going when he led her from the ballroom, away from the IG droids. He took her down several hallways and finally into a secluded alcove in a marble corridor, and gestured for her to sit on the little bench under a dozen hanging plants. Her plan had worked brilliantly, and she only had to keep him occupied until Mando arrived.

When she dropped onto the seat she hiked the hem of her skirt over her knee, and felt his hungry eyes on her bare skin. She didn't mind, because she was in control. She actually having fun with it. He was _her_ prey. She could be just as great a hunter as Mando.

Haddar sat down so close that their sides were pressed together. Red vines fell down around them, filtering light from the crystal chandelier.

"You're not a bait droid, are you?" He reached out to trace her collarbone. "A creature as beautiful as you must have been crafted in a workshop somewhere."

Lovely couldn't be sure if the flush that crept up her neck was due to the humidity. She was damp and sticky with sweat everywhere.

"Believe me, I'm all organic."

It would be untrue to say she wasn't enjoying all his attention. His hand trailing over her shoulder was delicate but deliberate. He was quite practiced. He leant even closer, she was snared in the trap of his flattery-

No. She was the hunter here.

She placed a steadying hand on his shoulder. "So what did you do to bring all this heat down on you?"

He looked a little confused. "I don't know why I have a bounty. I've never done anything wrong but help people."

It wasn't the answer she'd been expecting. "Help people?" She repeated.

He leant back again, considering her, his fingers idly smoothing the side of her neck. "I found a way to fool Bounty Hunters. But I can't tell just anyone."

Lovely leant into his touch. "I'm not just anyone."

He smiled wickedly at her. "No, you're not. But you're not in trouble... Not yet anyway."

He pulled her crossed leg over his own lap. The air was cool against her damp skin.

She gasped. "You help people in trouble?"

He dropped his face and whispered against her neck, lips brushing the fine chain of her necklace. "The ones that don't deserve to be. Anyone can put a price on someone's head with the Guild, so it's not always done for the right reasons. I use the knowledge I've been blessed with to save them."

It made sense. She’d had a bounty with the guild. There must be other innocents unfairly targeted too.

She couldn't help herself but to delve her fingers into his dark ruffled hair. "And to save yourself, of course."

"Of course."

His hand began to slide up under her metallic gown. She shut her eyes, dropped her head back against the marble wall and let the sensations overwhelm her. It had been so long since someone had touched her like this. Haddar's exploration reached the apex of her thighs, and he growled into her neck when her discovered her naked beneath her gown. She felt almost drunk, and she hadn't even had that much wine.

Anyone walking past would be able to see them through the leafy vines, but she couldn't bring herself to feel embarrassed. Heat was rising in her under Haddar's expert touch. She was burning up.

She remembered the chill of Mando's beskar pressed against her bare back in the ballroom dance. A shiver ran down her spine. The Mandalorian iron had been smooth and cold against her burning skin, a welcome relief. In her mind, Haddar's soft hand became a rough leather glove...

What the fuck was she thinking?

She almost jumped out of her seat, kicking Haddar's wandering touch away in the process.

He pulled away from her neck, squinting at her with suspicion. "What's the matter?"

"I thought I saw someone," she lied quickly.

Haddar looked about the deserted hallway, confused.

_"Lovely?"_

It was Mando calling her over the intercom.

"Ah, can I have a minute?" She asked Haddar. "I'll be right back."

She hastily grabbed up her purse, gave Haddar's suspicious gaze a wobbly smile in return, and scurried off in the direction of the washroom.

Once out of his earshot, she collapsed against the nearest wall, strangely out of breath.

_"Are you able to talk now?"_

"I'm free, Mando."

~

Mando didn't know what he'd been expecting to see when he'd followed them to a secluded corridor.

He didn't know why it was inspiring such anger in him. He was being irrational. Seducing Haddar to this extent wasn't exactly in the plan, but it wasn't too far of a stretch.

What was even more confusing, was that he'd fled the hallway back to the ballroom, missing a perfectly good opportunity to arrest Haddar.

_"I'm free, Mando."_

"What's your position?" Said Mando, trying to keep his tone level. Why he was pretending he didn't already know was beyond his understanding.

"If you've got Haddar away from the security guards I can help you detain-"

_"Mando, we can't bring this guy in, he's innocent."_

She'd bought into his bullshit.

Mando had been in the Guild long enough to know a little of the Haddar Family business. It was pretty easy to guess where his charges of patent theft arose from.

"He sells information about his family's tracking inventions to criminals," he said. "That makes him a criminal."

Lovely began to summarise Haddar's story, like she'd forgotten that Mando had been listening in to their whole conversation on the intercom. Had Haddar really had such a numbing effect on her that she'd forgotten about Mando entirely? A renewed pang of that prickly emotion shot through him.

Mando cut her off. "Lovely, stop being so gullible. Of course he's going to say that to you."

_"He's telling the truth."_

"You can't trust him. He worked for the Empire."

_"And so did I!"_

That was unexpected.

"…You did?"

How had he not known? His mind raced over all she'd said of her past. Surely she had mentioned it? He'd just assumed-

 _"Did you think I joined the rebels? Mando, I was an_ imperial _medic."_

The Imperials. The Empire. Conscripts and evil warlords. The organisation that had been responsible for so much pain and suffering throughout the galaxy. Lovely didn't quite fit into that picture in his mind.

 _"Are you ok?"_ It was Haddar's distant voice filtering through the intercom. _"Who were you talking to?"_

_"Just myself."_

~

Lovely was grateful for the cool air and darkness outside as she and Haddar slipped away from the palace through the maze of private courtyards. Mando was silent on the intercom. Had she really neglected to mention the Empire to him? It wasn't something she was proud of, but she wasn't ashamed either. It had been a job. The first real job in her life.

What was she going to do now? Mando had it out for Haddar, but Haddar was innocent of his crimes. He pulled her along urgently, but all Lovely wanted to do was stop and have a quiet moment to _think._

She crashed into Haddar. He'd stopped dead, facing the pair of Rodian bounty hunters that blocked their path through a courtyard.

"You won't escape us this time," said one.

Haddar didn't respond. He was shaking beside her.

The bounty hunters advanced forward and Lovely acted without conscious thought, ripping the miniature blaster from her purse and spraying the pair with bolts of energy.

The brightness blinded her for a few moments. When her vision returned the hunters were sprawled at her feet. She dropped the blaster and ducked to the floor to check their vitals, while Haddar watched with his mouth agape.

"It was only set to stun," She reassured him. "They'll be ok."

Haddar bent to retrieve her blaster.

"Let's get out of here," Lovely urged, standing again.

But instead of surrendering the blaster, Haddar dialled it up and discharged an extra, fatal bolt into each of the unconscious hunters.

Mando was suddenly back on the intercom, calling her name.

Haddar turned to her and for a terrifying beat she imagined that she was next.

"What's that?" He said peering just left of her face.

Lovely touched her ear, which had been exposed by the falling out of her hairstyle, and realised that her intercom was visible. Even worse, the seal was dislodged so that Mando's panicked cries were just audible in the silence of the night.

Haddar snatched it from her and held it to his own ear to listen.

Mando was calling her, " _Lovely? What was that blaster-fire for? Where are you?"_

Haddar's curious expression dropped into disappointed recognition.

"You're with that Mandalorian," he said, and turned her blaster toward her. He dropped the earpiece to the cobblestones and crushed it under his heel.

The truth hit her like a ton of durasteel. "You don't save innocents, do you? Mando was right. You sell to real criminals."

"And I make a fortune doing it. My conscience is clear." He nodded to the handcuffs falling out of her discarded purse on the floor. "Put those on."

She did as she was bid. They were the same cuffs Mando had slapped on her when she'd met him. Somehow, she was more scared now than she had been then.

She could only watch as Haddar procured the strangest collection of items from his pockets: A tracker, a small vibroblade, a glass vial and a lighter.

He turned the tracker over in his hands. It was beeping feverishly. It had to be his own.

"My father invented these infernal biometric trackers," he said, "Did you know they can only be set up with fresh DNA? Or frozen, of course. There are whole companies that charge the wealthy to securely store the frozen blood of their children, should they ever get kidnapped-"

"Or run away."

He ignored her interruption. "They're incredible. But you can trick them if you know how. Watch this."

Haddar pricked his thumb with the slim vibroblade. Blood welled up from the cut immediately, which he caught in the glass vial. Once it was half full, he used the lighter to heat it to a violent boil.

His dark eyes held hers as he stoppered the bubbling vial, and tossed it into the fountain.

"You're coming with me," he said, and dragged her away. The beeping of his tracker began to subside as they drew further and further away from the discarded vial.

Lovely's heart clenched in terror. So this was how he fooled the trackers and made his getaways. There would be no rescue for her after all, Mando's tracker would only lead him astray. Haddar would escape, and he seemed intent on taking her for the ride.

She tried to pull free, but Haddar's grip on her arm was firm. In her struggle, the chain about her neck swung free of the neckline of her gown. Cerelia's Captain's badge and her deactivated tracker glinted in the moonlight-

Her own tracker! A desperate plan formed in her mind.

But would Mando even want to save her now he knew she'd worked for the Empire he so despised?

~

Mando swore as he came upon the courtyard his where his tracker led to find it deserted, aside from the bodies of two slain hunters. It seemed Haddar had fooled him as before.

He sat by the fountain, collecting the crushed remains of Lovely's intercom and bitterly contemplating the prospect of chasing his Bounty to his next destination. It would be easy enough to find him in a few days once he'd resurfaced on a new planet, but what would happen to Lovely?

Lovely, the ex-imperial. He pictured her in the sky blue uniform of the Empire's medics, nursing those responsible for untold horrors. She'd restored life to generals and troopers who'd wiped out whole civilizations with a push of a button.

But she wasn't an imperial anymore, just one of the millions that had been left destitute in the dust of war. He'd thought he'd done right by her, by offering her a chance at making a living. Now she was in danger.

He imagined the horrors Haddar could inflict on her before Mando found them. And what if Haddar discarded her before then? How would he ever find her again?

He had to save her, or it would be on his conscience forever...

But there was also something darker tinging his determination, born of the moment he'd seen her entwined with Haddar beneath the red vines.

A flash of red light blinked at him from the dark cobblestone. Upon investigation, Mando discovered a thread of hope. It was Lovely's long necklace. Her tracker, though once deactivated, now blinked with life. She'd left it for him.

He was moving at once. There was no time to formulate a plan. Listening carefully to the pitch and frequency of the trackers beeps, he tracked them out of the palace grounds, down to the secure shipyard by the foreshore. The crashing of waves on the nearby beach muted his hearing.

Haddar and Lovely were several hundred yards ahead, boarding a gleaming Star Yacht.

They began to ascend the ramp and Mando became afraid he has too late after all. He was still so far. Lovely struggled against Haddar, but she was seemingly exhausted. Mando couldn't run any faster.

She became boneless, dead weight for Haddar to drag, and her face turned in Mando's direction. Even from the distance, Mando could see her hope spark back to life as she spotted him.

But Mando still had the whole length of a star ship to run. She had to stall.

~

The ramp to Haddar luxury ship was smooth, and the hatch at the top was wide. There was nothing to grab a hold of. Nothing to dig her heels into. Haddar had the advantage of her miniature blaster, and she knew he wasn't shy about using it.

He growled and pulled her back to her feet. "Careful, or you'll get the same as those hunters," he said.

Once she was in that ship, it would be over. Mando wouldn't be able to help her.

There was one thing left to try.

"Please let me go. I'll do anything," she breathed.

She fisted her hands in Haddar's silk shirt, and gave him the same sultry eyes as she had when they'd danced.

The grip on her waist tightened and his eyes dropped to her lips. He was wary, but curious.

He leaned in, and she panicked. She couldn't bear the thought of his lips on her again. Trapped, she took the only out she had left, and pretended to faint.

Haddar didn't even try to catch her. She caught sight him rolling his eyes through her lashes. He stooped to grab her ankles, and began hauling her up the last stretch of the ramp. After two heaves she was bumping through the door hatch.

Springing to life again, she kicked him in the wrists and shin.

Her blaster spun out of his hands. She'd hoped for the crack of a breaking knee, but her second blow hadn't landed as hard as she wished. Haddar swore, climbed on top of her, his weight pushing the breath from her lungs. He pulled his vibroblade, and brought it down-

A flash of silver filled her vision, and the weight lifted off her.

Lovely turned over to see that Mando had tackled Haddar headlong through the hatch. They grappled for control of the vibroblade on the slippery steel floor.

Haddar stretched it away from Mando's reach. Though he had longer arms, he was no match for Mando's strength. Mando soon wrested the blade from his grip, but in the scrap Haddar had found something better, the miniature blaster.

He fired on Mando. The charge bounced off his Beskar. Lovely rolled out of the way, tumbling off the side of the ramp to the tarmac several feet below. It was just in time, as the misfired bolts scorched through the ramp where she'd lain the second before.

From the ship above, she heard the thud of an internal door closing. The engines on the underbelly of the craft flared to life. Lovely scampered away before they burnt her. Before the ship began to lift of the ground, she saw Mando hammering frantically on the closed partition to the cockpit.

It rose higher and higher. There was nothing she could do to help, only follow it from the ground as it veered out of the shipyard.

The fear she felt before reared again, only now she was scared for Mando to disappear in Haddar's ship.

A hundred feet in the air over the beach, something was going wrong. The ship went into a tailspin and began to lose altitude. The flicker of a fire was visible in the cockpit. The windshield shattered and dark smoke billowed out.

Lovely leapt a boom gate and sprinted across the sand. The ship spiralled down and landed in the breaking waves with an almighty crash.

Lovely plunged into the surf and climbed into the wreckage. Strong waves slapped against the hull and the ship swayed, threatening to be swept away and swallowed up by the sea at any second. But she had to make sure Mando was ok.

The collapsing cabin was filling with water, already waist deep in parts. The partition to the cockpit had been ripped free. An unconscious Haddar slumped in front of a flaming control panel, bleeding from a head wound.

"Mando!?" She called. He was nowhere to be seen.

The water at the flooded end of the cabin bubbled, and as if answering her call, Mando broke through surface. If her hands weren't still cuffed together, she might have thrown them around him. They held a gaze for less than a second. There was no time to talk or formulate a plan, but they both knew what had to be done.

Together, they dragged the unconscious Haddar out of the ship, through the waves and up onto the sand. Just as they escaped, an almighty swell washed over the wreckage and dragged it away into the depths.

They deposited their bounty face down in the wet sand and collapsed either side of him to catch their breaths, shivering and drenched through.

The waves crashing against the beach and the beeping of her tracker were the only sounds for a long while.

When Lovely finally gathered the courage to turn her eyes to Mando, she found him already looking at her.

There was an awkwardness between them that hung on the edge of their last intercom conversation cut short. She'd heard so much malice in his opinion of the Empire, and yet he'd risked his life to save her.

"I'm sorry I believed Haddar. I was naive."

Mando nodded.

She felt the need to explain herself.

"The Empire did terrible things," She said. "I didn't even know the half of it until the collapse. But the things I did know, I turned a blind eye to. I was doing good work, after all. I was saving lives, just the wrong ones, apparently."

Unable to bear the intensity of his blank visor, she dropped her eyes and saw that he still held her necklace with the tracker and Cerelia's badge in his clenched fist. The corner of the badge that poked out of his grip was encrusted with blood.

She had to reach him. Make him understand.

"How can any life saved be the wrong one? In some eyes I'm still a traitor."

"Not in my eyes," said Mando.

She was winded with the force of his words.

He continued, "You wanted to believe Haddar because he was like you. A runaway who worked for the Empire."

He'd cut to the very core of her with something she couldn't have seen in herself. And he was right.

Mando wiped the blood from Cerelia's badge with a soaked sleeve until it was perfectly clean. The symbol of the empire shone bright under the moonlight.

"Someone once told me," he said, "'Only you own your soul. It doesn't belong to your past.' You are proof enough. I was wrong to judge."

He handed the memento necklace back to her.

Her naivety, his prejudice: she could almost see them being eroded away like the shell of Haddar's ship. It left something else between them, broad and intangible-

"I think we should stop making plans," she said lightly, to break herself away from _that_ line of thought. "We never follow them."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> UPDATE December 2020: This work will receive new chapters soon. I am just holding off while season 2 of the show is airing to determine if this fic can be 'post-season 2 canon compliant' with minor rewrites, or if I will keep it as is.


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